This album is a miracle; there’s no two ways around it, that we are hearing new music from Alan Sparhawk not even two years after the tragic loss of his wife and bandmate Mimi Parker is nothing short of miraculous. Inseparable in life and in music, the two of them were the constants that drove Low forward across three decades of innovation. It would have been understandable for Sparhawk to walk away after Parker’s death from ovarian cancer in late 2022. Grief can be insurmountable like that; yet the solution to channelling and processing that devastating loss was indeed to create. Sparhawk is a lifer—brother, he’s still in. He’s in until he goes deaf.

White Roses, My God sounds like nothing he’s ever been involved in before—billed as his debut solo album, the only thing that could possibly compare is 2006’s Solo Guitar, and that was several lifetimes ago at this point. Low’s work had awesome power behind it even at its most fragile, with their final bow being 2022’s disorienting HEY WHAT, full of songs that seemed under constant threat of disintegrating. Sparhawk’s first offering since then breaks with the past, his voice smothered by a vocoder, sounding so unlike himself that were it not for his name on the record, it could be anyone. ‘Can U Hear’ doubles down on the experimental streak Sparhawk’s expressed since Ones and Sixes, skeletal trap beats and juddering synth-bass stabs joining Sparhawk’s unrecognisable voice in the lineup of instruments. Read that again: his voice functions primarily as an instrument, and your enjoyment of this record hinges on how well you take that.

This isn’t music meant to be plainly heard or understood; this is music to be felt. It’s not a new beginning for Sparhawk, or a hard reset; indeed, with the veil lifted from songs like propulsive opener ‘Get Still’, it’s understandable to imagine it in a more fleshed out form as a continuation of the sound Low spent much of the previous decade exploring. Other songs like the similarly brief ‘I Made This Beat’— on which it’s Sparhawk making beats on his own,
picking up the torch from Parker’s extraordinary, weighty drumming style—and ‘Heaven’, the latter a gut-wrenching tribute to those departed on which Sparhawk’s vocals regain a disarming clarity, could only have been made in a vacuum; it’s a testament to his long-running creativity that he allowed himself to be selfish and see what could be created with the most rudimentary of equipment.

Sparhawk has experience with taking straightforward ideas and warping them beyond comprehension; it’s jarring how contemporary something like ‘Somebody Else’s Room’ sounds, doffing the cap to the more outré elements of what passes for 2020s pop music while sounding utterly singular. It’s not a previous innovator finding himself behind the curve and chasing trends; it’s someone whose relationship with creation has been clouded and altered by grief. ‘Feel Something’ is akin to an emotional exorcism, the lyric gradually morphing over three and a half minutes as Sparhawk finds himself opening up, allowing himself to feel, to process, to create. There’s something fascinating about someone like this operating so far outside of his usual remit; meticulously putting these songs together not because he wants to, but because he has to.

Case in point: there’s a second solo record coming next year with Trampled By Turtles as Sparhawk’s backing band, the follow-up to an album that will no doubt split opinion. You may not begin to wrap your head around White Roses, My God after your first listen, or even your second, or third. As with everything Alan Sparhawk’s been involved with, this really sinks its teeth in when you’re least expecting it. A musical document of an esteemed, bereaved artist learning to create again after his previous songwriting partnership was painfully, cruelly severed—he’s never been for everyone, and after three decades, finding the courage to do something entirely for himself is commendable; that it results in one of the year’s most head- turning records is even better. A brave undertaking; perhaps a new beginning; certainly a triumph.

order White Roses, My God by Alan Sparhawk HERE