Alan Sparhawk – With Trampled by Turtles
At the center of White Roses, My God, Alan Sparhawk‘s electronics-driven solo album and first release since the end of Low and the death of his longtime partner Mimi Parker, is a one-minute meditation called “Heaven.” Through an Auto-Tune filter and a sparse backing of synths and programmed beats, Sparhawk offers a reflection on grief that’s poignant in its simplicity, reflecting not just on the empty space left behind after the loss of a loved one, but the same negative space that follows them to wherever they’ll end up in their travels beyond this plane: “Heaven/It’s a lonely place if you’re alone/I wanna be there with the people that I love.”
That same song reappears on Sparhawk’s follow-up to White Roses, his first full-length collaboration with Duluth progressive bluegrass group Trampled by Turtles. But in its total absence of electronic effects, every trace of drum machines or Auto-Tune swapped out for exclusively acoustic instruments, “Heaven” feels like an entirely different piece of music. Its stark two minutes feel less like a prayer channeled through samplers and a laptop and more like folk wisdom handed down over generations. It sounds older and more seasoned than it is, as if Sparhawk reached back through a century of tradition to express a feeling that everyone, eventually, will understand.
Similar could be said of many of the songs on Sparhawk’s album with Trampled by Turtles, a set of songs that bears little to no resemblance to last year’s hyperpop-informed journey through joy and heartache, sometimes in equal measure. The brightness on that record was at times blinding, where everything here is worn and weathered, rustic and earthen. That tends to happen with folk and bluegrass, two malleable yet spiritually nourishing forms that are referred to as “roots music” for good reason. But in the red clay and woodgrain, here, you can more easily make out the kind of haunting melodies that Sparhawk crafted in his former band and the depth of emotions that has made that band’s music so enduring.
Without the filter of electronic effects splashed over his vocals, Sparhawk’s hymns are more direct, making the ache of loss all the more palpable. Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles is like the inverse of its predecessor—slower, starker, more unguarded in its verses of mourning. White Roses, My God could break your heart if you let it; it’s not even a question here, where the simplicity and restrained beauty of a song like “Princess Road Surgery” is disarming in its three-chord directness, Sparhawk and company singing in harmony, “So much for saving the world/I thought you’d make it for sure.”
A band as versatile and nearly as prolific as Low since making their debut in 2004, Trampled by Turtles provide these songs with arrangements that feel rich but with lots of room to breathe, underlining and enhancing but never overshadowing the emotional gravity of Sparhawk’s vocals. They build a gorgeous bed for Sparhawk’s cries into the void on “Screaming Song” (“When you flew out the window and into the sunset/I thought I would never stop screamin’/I thought I would never stop screamin’ your name“), but when he cedes ground to the rest of the group, violinist Ryan Young lets loose with a piercing and abrasive solo that feels like a scream of its own. They provide a gorgeously dense and overwhelming backing choir on “Get Still,” the other song that reappears from White Roses, while there’s a gothic darkness to the juxtaposition of banjo and bowed bass on “Don’t Take Your Light.” But Sparhawk’s most striking collaborator here turns out to be his own daughter and DERECHO Rhythm Section bandmate Hollis, whose sweetly somber vocals on “Not Broken” uncannily resemble those of Mimi Parker as she sings, “It’s not broken/I’m not angry.” It’s a beautiful moment of acceptance, but heartbreaking all the same.
It’s in large part because of the players involved—family, friends and members of the Duluth music community from which Low emerged—that With Trampled by Turtles is as warm and inviting an album as it is, in spite of the sorrow that flows through it. There’s a looseness to the album that makes it charming and casual—the song’s arrangements were all worked out quickly in the studios without prior rehearsal, leaving a natural and underpolished session with minimal overdubs to get in the way of what guitarist Dave Simonett called “one of the most emotional experiences of playing music that I ever had.” It’s no less throttling to the heartstrings as a listening experience, but it’s never a lonely one, offering the most beautiful reminder that grief, love and community can’t exist without each other.
Label: Sub Pop
Year: 2025
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Alan Sparhawk : With Trampled by Turtles
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