Review Summary: Life and death
I recently revisited a few of the Harry Potter movies and the occasion served as a reminder of how affecting I find “The Tale of the Three Brothers”, AKA J.K. Rowling’s attempt at a wizarding world fairy tale regarding the Deathly Hallows. Perhaps this is an embarrassing admission for a full-grown adult, but I find a lot of meaning in it, as the author managed to perfectly capture the essence of these kind of old fables - fusing a sort of moralistic simplicity which rarely finds direct application in daily life with much deeper wisdom - in this case, that confronting your own mortality with grace has an inherent dignity - “
Death searched for the youngest brother as years passed but never succeeded. It was only when the third brother reached a great age that he took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son. Greeting Death as an old friend, they departed this life as equals”.
It’s doubtful that Alan Sparhawk is as forgiving of the personified Death on his latest musical project, but it would be unfair to expect him to be. After all, the elephant in the room is the 2022 death of Mimi Parker, not only his longtime bandmate in the iconic slowcore outfit Low, but also his romantic partner and wife of decades.
Alan Sparhawk with Trampled By Turtles sees the veteran musician join forces with progressive bluegrass royalty (fittingly, another Minnesotan act) to wrestle with his immense grief.
The pairing turns out to be ideal - Sparhawk’s voice and presence maintains the kind of somber elegance he’s always had, while Trampled By Turtles provide a rustic backdrop which not only fits the material like a glove, but adds a world-weary sense of depth. Truth be told, there’s a few less memorable songs in the fairly brief nine song tracklist, but also some astounding heights, if “heights” can be used to describe such a harrowing sense of sadness. On “Not Broken”, Sparhawk’s daughter Hollis lends her vocals, a touching addition only accentuated by the fact she sounds an awful lot like Mimi Parker. Meanwhile, “Don’t Take Your Light” seems destined to be a sparse and vulnerable Americana classic of the sort Jason Molina left us with.
It’s album centerpiece “Screaming Song” which hits the hardest, though. Not only does it feature Sparhawk’s most straightforward meditations on his wife’s passing - “
when you flew out the window and into the sunset, I thought I would never stop screaming, I thought I would never stop screaming your name, but I ran out of breath”, as the backing instrumentation swells and swells in abrasive cacophony, intent on echoing the wrenching emotion of human vocal chords. It’s an intensely powerful piece of imagery - bodily function literally giving out from being stretched to the maximum, without shifting the terrible underlying reality in the slightest - a blunt demonstration of the undeniable truth of the supremacy of death over all us mortals (Alan Sparhawk included).
Then again, he’s still singing.
