Alan Sparhawk - White Roses, My God - Import CD

Credits:

Alan Sparhawk

Description:

As a co-founder of Low, Alan Sparhawk spent almost 30 years exploring the microscopic details with his music, first by slowing everything to a crawl with minimal and drawn-out songwriting, and by the time of later albums like 2018s Double Negative and 2021s HEY WHAT, by experimenting with distortion, layered production, and out-of-character harshness. Low ended in 2022 with the death of Mimi Parker, who had started the band with Sparhawk and been married to him for its duration, completing their sound with her strikingly straightforward presence, one that was simultaneously hushed and overpowering. White Roses, My God, Sparhawks second album released under his own name following 2006s entirely instrumental Solo Guitar, finds him trying to forge a path forward after both the end of Low and the loss of his lifelong partner. Much as Lows final few albums were fearless leaps into uncharted waters for the band, Sparhawk embraces experimentalism and chance throughout White Roses, My God. Its a record with almost no guitars but plenty of drum machines, synths, and a markedly digital personality. The entirety of the vocals on the album are processed through a vocoder, rendering Sparhawks voice -- one that could be a fragile whisper or an anguished bellow in Low -- into cold, computeristic perfection. The songwriting can be just as powerful as some of his best work, and the intensity of grief comes through clearly on tracks like the lonely, aching "Heaven" or in the sharp synth stabs and foreboding melodies of "Can U Hear." "Feel Something" comes on like a bouncy chillwave track, its bass line highly reminiscent of the earliest Nite Jewel material, but Sparhawks lyrics of emotional disconnect and his pleading, sorrowful performance moves the song into darker, more vulnerable waters. The processed vocals will be the make-or-break element for most listeners. After a few spins, it becomes easier to find the human personality that Sparhawk obscures with his vocoded vocals, much in the same way as with Neil Youngs polarizing 1983 offering Trans or Princes pitch-shifted alter ego Camille. Sparhawks inclusion of songs that come off at first as less substantial (the exercise-like "I Made This Beat" or the droning "Somebody Elses Room") tends to blur the line between the records soul-scouring and emotionally weighty tracks and those that sound like they just kind of happened and were deemed interesting enough to keep on the album. Sparhawk has always been smart, self-aware, and prone to inserting his bone-dry sense of humor into his music, and sitting with White Roses, My God for a while reveals deeper connections between the songs, the production choices, the feelings he chooses to share, and the moments he chooses to share them. Hes as present and raw beneath the computer voice as hes ever been, but with these darkroom synth tracks, Sparhawk makes his audience work a little harder to locate him. ~ Fred Thomas