A 29 second excerpt from "Lullaby". This song became one of Low's most famous tracks. The song, alongside the rest of I Could Live in Hope, helped pioneer the genre slowcore, which Pitchfork described as "stretch[ing] a simple melody into a 10-minute meditation that gently pulls [the listener] out of linear time".[2]
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."[3][4] 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.[5][4][6][7]
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'sdebut."[8]
Legacy
Featuring an "unprecedent pace in the then-flowering underground,"[4]I Could Live in Hope helped to birth the genre known as slowcore, which encompassed acts from Bedhead to Codeine throughout the 1990s.[6]
Pitchfork placed I Could Live in Hope at number 49 on its 1999 list of the best albums of the 1990s.[11] 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.[12] In 2004, the album was included in Les Inrockuptibles' "50 Years of Rock'n'Roll" list.[13] In 2018, Pitchfork placed it at number 22 on its list of the 30 best dream pop albums.[14]
