Alan Sparhawk
The Barbican, London, November 6, 2024
Twenty-four hours before this show, the last of three UK dates promoting Alan Sparhawk’s White Roses, My God album - he returns to Europe in March - the Washington-born musician delivered a short message to his followers on social media: “Hard anniversary today. Light a candle, sing, & show some love to someone who needs it.” Not only was November 5 election day in the United States it was two years since the death from cancer of Mimi Parker, his wife and partner in Low for more than three decades. He spent the evening playing a concert in Cardiff.
For Sparhawk, Parker’s passing must feel like the defining moment of the second half of his life; one of the hardest challenges you have to face in grief is to not let yourself be defined by the enormity of another’s absence, no matter the part they played in your life. Among the solutions is keeping moving - whether literally or metaphorically - to make it impossible for anyone to pin you down in their mind. You can’t move on, but you can still move forward.
“The tools I used before no longer work,” he explained in July, when asked why his first solo project since the end of Low was such a radical new direction, the lyrics hard to make out, the beats electronic. “I’m trying to use my voice, but I don’t want to hear my voice … but I also do want to hear it, so I needed to find another voice.” The White Roses, My God tour, then, showcases a musician looking for new ways to function as a performer and as a man, without the one who always had his back, and perhaps that is why tonight’s show, as part of the Pitchfork Music Festival London, feels more like a phase, a relay station, than a destination.
He arrives on a stage decorated with white roses - traditionally, symbols of eternal loyalty and new starts - in a pale hoodie, soon-discarded in favour of plain dungarees. There is a table of electric gizmos, buttons to press, and son Cyrus plays bass, but all eyes are on Sparhawk Sr, dancing around the stage like no one is watching, throwing shapes and tossing his hair. “Do you want a big thrill,” ask the opening lyrics of Get Still, “do you wanna get real?’
Reality, however, is slippery. With his voice constantly distorted through pitch shifting, Sparhawk throws up distance between himself and the audience: what you hear is not necessarily the sound he made. The lyrics - printed white on white on the album - frequently hint at being too important to be overlooked, but perhaps also too personal to share. You can feel the layers of emotion, though, just as you would if you heard Brother or Project 4 Ever in a darkened club late at night.
This makes it all the more powerful when he picks up his guitar and ditches the autotune for Heaven, one of the most direct songs on White Roses, My God. “Heaven is a lonely place when you’re alone/I want to be there with the one I love.” These are not words you sing casually while marking the second anniversary of someone’s departure to the afterlife, wherever their destination.
Heaven is the seventh and final selection from White Roses, My God; the rest of the night is given over to songs whose provenance has yet to be declared. Sparhawk and the band Trampled By Turtles, a folk-inspired sextet and neighbours in Duluth, Minnesota, have a collection almost finished and scheduled to be released in the first half of 2025. “It’s more acoustic,” he promises, and if the seven songs that follow are any indication of its conception, it is also more “Low-like”, but with added pain.
There’s a well-worked narrative arc to this part of the set. “When you flew out the window and into the sunset, I thought I’d never stop screaming your name,” begins Screaming Song, hurling the singer back to the moment of loss. While JCMF seethes, Torn & In Ashes and Get High find Sparhawk trying to find ways to cope with a situation beyond his comprehension, before realising he has been lied to on Stranger. “Gotta do a little research before you say you know/Got to tell you the details/Got to write that shit down.” Once he reaches Not Broken, with its “I’m not angry” refrain, you know his personal future is going to be all right.
The closing song, the hymn in tribute to Mimi that is Don’t Take Your Light Out Of Me, is the perfect finale. Sparhawk has spoken of hoping his wife can still be a light for others to find in their own moments of darkness, tonight it casts a stillness across the auditorium. “I can be patient, see what I see/I can be hopeful/I can believe.” Putting down his guitar, he swiftly distributes the white roses to the audience and departs. Still moving, still avoiding definition, still seeking his own destination, and still showing love to anyone who needs it.
Setlist:
Get Still
I Made This Beat
Can U Hear
Station
Brother
Project 4 Ever
Heaven
Screaming Song
JCMF
Torn & In Ashes
Get High
Stranger
Not Broken
Don’t Take Your Love Out Of Me
Photo: Kimberley Ross