Album: Alan Sparhawk - White Roses, My God

White Roses, My God isn’t a Low album. It couldn’t be. Mimi Parker, Alan Sparhawk’s wife and partner in Low, died in November 2022. And despite Low’s many musical twists and turns, Sparhawk’s public return to music sounds nothing like any of Low’s outings across their 13 studio albums, the first of which was issued in 1994.

The opening track is “Get Still.” Its melodic bed comes from a keyboard line played on what sounds like a pre-digital synth: perhaps a Korg or a Mini-Moog. A glitchey beat provides underpinning. The vocal combines a treatment similar to that heard on Neil Young’s 1982 album Trans with sudden tonal shifts characteristic of Auto-Tune. The words are hard to make out. A stabbing vocal chorale intermittently interjects itself. Next up, the presumably explicitly titled “I Made This Beat” has similar building blocks, yet its propulsion nods towards R&B. It’s followed by the rolling “Not the 1,” which shares its twilight mood with Kraftwerk’s “Neon Lights.” While there’s a nodding acquaintance with Bon Iver’s excursions into electronica, White Roses, My God might exhibit a hitherto unidentified influence J Dilla has had on Sparhawk. Or maybe Crystal Castles? Sparhawk's guitar, previously always his main instrument, is heard just once, on “Brother.”

Is White Roses, My God’s an expression of grief, loss or mourning? Numbness? Anger even? It has to be some or all of these. During the track titled “Heaven,” the word “lonely” is heard. The lyrics of “Feel Something” repeatedly ask “can you feel something?” Then, Sparhawk declares “I think I feel something.” On “Station,” he states “I can please myself with the little things I surround myself with, I can please myself with the little things I seek out.” It ends with “Project 4 Ever,” possibly an acknowledgment of the spirit as eternal. As a Mormon, faith has been central for Sparhawk.

White Roses, My God could not exist without what Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker shared. Conceivably then, and contrary to the initial impression, this is a form of Low album.

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