If you've heard anything at all about the latest Low album, The Great Destroyer, you've no doubt heard that this is the Duluth, Minnesota-based trio's "rock" record, the one on which the long-running sadcore band finally kicks the tempos up a notch and stomps on the distortion pedals. This is true. But those who have been following Low since it started putting out CDs in the mid-'90s have always known that the group could rock out; check out "Canada", from 2002's Trust, for proof of that. And rest assured that Low's signature elements are still intact: the husband-and-wife vocal harmonies of guitarist Alan Sparhawk and drummer Mimi Parker are as breathtakingly melancholy as ever, and numbers such as "Silver Rider" and "Cue the Strings" unfurl at a familiar glacial pace. Less expected are the convincingly fiery explosions of Crazy Horse-brand lead guitar that light up "On the Edge Of", "Step", and "When I Go Deaf"-not to mention the brisk tempos that drive "Everybody's Song" and "California" dangerously close to pop-song territory.

Some of these developments are surprising, coming from a band that popular legend (and Low's own official bio) would have us believe set out to create the musical equivalent of maximum-strength codeine cough syrup. According to bassist Zak Sally, reached at home, Low-at Richard's on Richards on Saturday (March 26)-was never quite that calculating. "Obviously it's true that we were very slow and quiet in the early days, but it was more because that was what was really interesting to us at that time, to play that way," he says. "It wasn't like, 'Hey we're gonna set out to prove how slow and quiet you can play to people;' it more like this language we had discovered for ourselves. Right now, I sometimes feel like the band has been kind of working backwards towards normalcy, but it's being done in such a weird way that being normal doesn't even work."

Viewed in that light, The Great Destroyer is a logical step forward for Low. Sally says that the band's growing confidence with lush arrangements and standard rock-band dynamics is a natural part of its evolution. "We had to get to a point where being a good band is more important to us than being a slow-and-quiet band," he says. "If we write a song and it sounds like it needs something besides that, we've got to do that."

It's not surprising that the wonderfully nuanced album-which was produced by David Fridmann, known for his work with Mercury Rev and the Flaming Lips-has earned Low some of the best press of its career. There have been a few dissenters. Pitchfork dismissed the disc as a "misstep" and Alternative Press called it "a bittersweet pill that's best taken in small doses". For the most part, though, critics have pegged The Great Destroyer as one of this still-young year's standouts. That bodes well for Low's steadily swelling fan base, but Sally admits that the idea of the group's following expanding too much freaks him out a little.

"I think we'd be uncomfortable if we started playing shows and all of a sudden there was four times as many people, or even twice as many people," the bassist states. "I'm really pretty fond of the way our listenership has grown, and I just don't feel like it's grown in a manipulative way or a flash-in-the-pan sort of way. Over time, more people are listening to us and more people come to the shows. That feels very healthy and very normal to me."