| I Could Live in Hope | |
| Type: | Album |
| Artist: | Low |
| Cover: | Low_i_could_live_in_hope.jpg |
| Recorded: | Autumn 1993 |
| Studio: | Noise New Jersey, Hope Township, New Jersey[1] |
| Label: | Vernon Yard |
| Producer: | Mark Kramer |
| Next Title: | Long Division |
| Next Year: | 1995 |
I Could Live in Hope is the debut studio album by American indie rock band Low. It was released on February 18, 1994, on Vernon Yard Recordings.
A reaction to the abrasiveness of alternative rock in the early 1990s, when grunge had reigning popularity, Low "eschewed conventional songwriting in favour of mood and movement."[2] [3] Influenced by Brian Eno and Joy Division, the band, working with long-time producer and New York underground mainstay Mark Kramer, favored slow-paced compositions, a minimum of instrumentation and an economy of language.[3] [4]
I Could Live in Hope received generally positive reviews from contemporary music critics. Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot felt that "its heavy-lidded drama creeps by in all-enveloping slow motion" and called it "the best record made for those dreary, nothing's-going-on-and-I-want-to-crawl-into-a-hole afternoons since Galaxie 500's debut."
Featuring an "unprecedent pace in the then-flowering underground,"[3] I Could Live in Hope helped to birth the genre known as slowcore, which encompassed acts from Bedhead to Codeine throughout the 1990s.[5]
Pitchfork placed I Could Live in Hope at number 49 on its 1999 list of the best albums of the 1990s.[6] The same year, critic Ned Raggett ranked it at number 37 on his list of "The Top 136 or So Albums of the Nineties" for Freaky Trigger.[7] In 2004, the album was included in Les Inrockuptibles "50 Years of Rock'n'Roll" list.[8] In 2018, Pitchfork placed it at number 22 on its list of the 30 best dream pop albums.[9]
Credits adapted from the liner notes of I Could Live in Hope.[10]