Lower make intense music. Seek Warmer Climes, the Copenhagen quartet’s debut album, sparkles with the harmonic dissonance and high-strung urgency of their underground music forebears.

But Lower – Adrian Toubro (vocals), Simon Formann (guitar), Kristian Emdal (bass) and Anton Rothstein (drums) – also channel the romance and drama of great singer-songwriters, from late-period Scott Walker to Bryan Ferry. The result is a hugely ambitious and affecting rock album that enters deeply personal and unusual sonic and topical spaces.

Certainly, you don’t have to dig deep to hear how far Lower’s music sits from the traditional concerns of modern rock music. Toubro’s lyrics are finely wrought emotional dramas that, in their poetic construction and raw honesty of delivery, gesture to the music of Walker or Leonard Cohen.

The striking cover art of Seek Warmer Climes is a photograph shot by Emdal, who has directed visual material for a lot of Copenhagen groups (he also directed the Vår video ‘In Your Arms (Final Fantasy)’ and took the photo of a hunting falcon that adorns Iceage’s ‘You’re Nothing.’ It's one of several connections between the band and the Copenhagen underground.

The ambition is to express the internal and external influences that make a human, to the truest degree possible. This being our truth, one ambition as well is to function as a group – being able to help, listen, live and work together, to take something away from being Lower. Something that is real and relates to the hard-knit relations that make up life. It is also very important to constantly expand and evolve. Stagnancy is for the lazy.

LOWER blew away The New York Times's Ben Ratliff when they played here last week. He calls them “a post-punk band in early metamorphosis, luxuriating in unease,” and describes their songs as “strong, stirring and ready” and “gnarled and fortressed.” the Times ran a lengthy live review with a great photo.

2014 Rhythmethod