How do you make sense of the unanswered questions and all-engulfing sadness that comes with losing someone? What do you do when everything feels like it’s disintegrating? How do you navigate the aching numbness that grief brings?
White Roses, My God is Alan Sparhawk’s answer: a record borne of grief for the loss of his wife, Mimi Parker – both his partner and creative collaborator. Together, over thirty years, they created the hushed, strange beauty of Low until she passed away in 2022.
Made by Sparhawk entirely on his own, White Roses is the sound of someone searching for his voice, a new way to articulate the love they shared and all that is missed. Crucially, it’s a way to break through the numbness. “Can you feel something?” he asks on ‘Feel Something’ over squelching synths, his voice processed through a vocoder. The line repeats over and over. Suddenly as the song builds, he exhales “I think I feel something, yeah.”
Surrounding himself with just a drum machine, a synth and a voice pitch effect, Sparhawk describes the process he went through as “stabbing into the unknown, trying to figure things out”. And that’s what it sounds like: the chaos of all his feelings shaped into something like clarity.
From the opening of ‘Get Still’’s glitchy beat it’s clear the results won’t sound like Low. His auto-tuned voice is unrecognisable. So, while it’s so clearly a record about loss, it’s not one that reverberates with grief. In fact there’s a joy in the bold, restless exploration – messing with the machines until something human came out. And there’s also a joy in treasuring Parker’s memory.
Her search was always one for tranquillity. Yet in contrast to Low’s glacial procession, this is a record that’s full of movement and kinetic force. Sparhawk is trying to celebrate everything they had: the sadness and loss transformed into a loud, bold kind of hope.
Neil Young’s Trans is the most obvious reference point. But there are spluttering Kraftwerk-like beats here too, a touch of Prince as well. ‘Can U Hear’, the album’s eerie first single, sets the scene, its drone mournful yet unafraid. Throughout, and for obvious reasons, it’s clear Sparhawk is searching for something: catharsis or at least a distraction from everything that’s happening. 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.”
Whatever he’s searching for, as the record reaches its crescendo you feel like he’s getting close to uncovering it. Final track ‘Project 4 Ever’, a recognition both of his spirituality and how the loved ones we lose pull restlessly at our hearts, is a poignant final statement. “I have wanted to wake you with everything I could be… I’m waiting forever” his pitch-shifted voice intones. Waves of white noise and drone overwhelm before giving way to dappled sunlight. “Forever forever forever,” he sings. It’s a reminder that beneath all the grief there’s the glimmer of something else just under the surface: the memories of all the things they had together.
