From Low’s first release, 1994’s I Could Live in Hope, through 1999’s Secret Name, you could be reasonably assured as to what you were getting when it came to a Low album. The band’s general formula consisted of Alan Sparhawk’s delicate, sparse guitar arrangements moving languidly around wife Mimi Parker’s bare-bones tom, snare, and cymbals; tales of damaged lives were woven between the two as they traded harmonies in the spaces between their instruments – and there was always space.

Things We Lost in the Fire hinted at a new direction when it was released in 2001. Songs were thicker with guitar and bass than before, and the band who’d become almost synonymous with the glacially-paced slowcore genre began writing comparatively faster, more structured pieces.

Trust (2002) continued this trend, and in 2005, the band released The Great Destroyer, which surprised many fans with aggressive songs that fell much closer to the standard ideas of indie rock than they’d ever approached before. Produced by former Mercury Rev knob twiddler Dave Fridmann for the historically loud Sub Pop label, the album explored familiar issues lyrically – God, failing relationships, pain, redemption – but instead of the usually subdued, shimmering backdrop, Low delivered a seething, volume-laden record that surprised many fans and marked a new direction for a band a decade into their existence.

Here, then, is where we arrive at the seed of the new documentary, You May Need a Murderer. The tour for Great Destroyer was cut short due to Alan Sparhawk’s much-publicized health issues, and this event haunts the interviews with the band throughout.

You May Need a Murderer follows Low both on and beyond the tour for the follow-up album, 2007’s Drums and Guns. Parker and Sparhawk are interviewed both together and separately, in and around their home, various locations around Duluth, in their van, in their church . . . it’s often like a third-person home movie.

Just once, about half-way through the film, director David Kleijwegt asks Sparhawk specifically about the tour cancellation and his mental stability. Sparhawk defers answering and instead offers a glimpse of where he currently is. Kleijwegt doesn’t push back, but what happened is not a secret – Sparhawk publicly confessed his issues when the dates were postponed. As fans watching the candid interviews throughout, we already know what Sparhawk’s gone through. We know we’re seeing a person who has gone through some serious shit – magnified by the public eye – and (hopefully) has come out on the other side of it, albeit a little more shaken by what he’s seen.

Sparhawk wants to move on, but it seems hard for both fans and him to leave the baggage behind right now. This is not a guy who’s written songs about lollipops and balloon animals – Low has always been a pedestal act for both the literate and the morose. Teetering on the edge has seemingly become a way of life here, and while Sparhawk seems not to relish that position – he appears to be moving away from the precipice instead of riding it – it can be difficult as an outsider, as an admirer of his public offerings, to take his words out of the fractured package they’re presented in.

When Mimi Parker is posed the same question concerning the tour cancellation separately, she reveals little, but what she does give says more than what the words themselves convey. Parker has always been the Sophia to Sparhawk’s Demiurge, and she shines throughout the film. She addresses the issues that concern her public persona as part of “the band” with a reserved respect for her family’s privacy, and furthermore for Sparhawk’s individual right to speak for himself.

Interpreted through their music and lyrics, both Parker and Sparhawk have always seemed epochally older than their years. For all of Sparhawk’s pontification and personal and social reflection – and this film is admittedly full of it – it is Mimi Parker who embodies wisdom and strength. Her voice towers over Sparhawk’s when present in the band’s music, yet she wholeheartedly admits to enjoying a background role. Granted, a 70-minute edited film is not an opportunity to benchmark a person, much less a marriage – but it is hard to deny Parker’s quiet power and the reach of her presence on her family.

Her warmth as a mother comes through in the film as well. The couple’s children, Hollis and Cyrus, are constant fixtures throughout. This is Hollis’ second feature, following her inclusion in 2005’s Live in Europe tour DVD, and younger brother Cyrus does all the typically rambunctious things a three-year old does. Parker chases him around the church parking lot in one scene – at once concerned about the vehicles coming in and out of the lot, and in the next moment playfully running after him. Elsewhere, the family writes a song about a big-toothed dinosaur together.

Sparhawk spends the majority of his screentime and the majority of the film’s runtime discussing the state of American attitudes, his thoughts on the place of religion, and specifically the family’s Mormon beliefs, in the world through a tense-jawed distance, consumed to the point of becoming a concept of his beliefs to the viewer. Mimi Parker is, in comparison, the human being, the nurturing mother, the family discipliner, the calm force, the bright laugh off-camera in a dark bar’s green room that reminds us of the beauty of not just what Low do as a band, but what Parker and Sparhawk do as people.

The film is littered with live performances throughout, although most are not full renditions. We see Parker and Sparhawk performing in their front room, and outside a weather-beaten old porch. Sparhawk performs “Pretty People” a cappella, standing in a wooded area at the opening of the film, and later, does a song standing on a country road outside of his hometown, population 29.

For Kansas City fans, the biggest treat is the number of performances culled from the band’s performance at the Record Bar last September. Although the footage is the lowest-quality of the film, seeing several segments of Sparhawk, Parker, and former bassist Matt Livingston in front of the curtained backdrop of the city’s best venue (and the only crowd footage of the documentary) was a highlight. It’s great that the band and VPRO, the Dutch radio station which produced the film, felt the Kansas City performance was both intimate and strong enough to use extensively, and we hope that it was enough to bring Low back to town the next time around.

By the way – check out this great video for “Hatchet” from Drums and Guns, notable if, for anything, Mimi’s great solo take on this song: