“I can please myself with the things that I seek out,” declared Alan Sparhawk on “Station”, from last year’s extraordinary White Roses, My God. It read like creative self-affirmation with a note of shock, as he moved forward in the wake of Mimi Parker’s death and the resulting end of Low. In recent years those “things” he’s been seeking have included laid-back funk (as played with his son Cyrus, in Derecho Rhythm Section), mutant electro-funk (in the quartet Damien, also with Cyrus) and doom-sludge riffery (with Feast Of Lanterns). Now, a record from a very different collaborative beast, with a longer history.
“I can please myself with the things that I seek out,” declared Alan Sparhawk on “Station”, from last year’s extraordinary White Roses, My God. It read like creative self-affirmation with a note of shock, as he moved forward in the wake of Mimi Parker’s death and the resulting end of Low. In recent years those “things” he’s been seeking have included laid-back funk (as played with his son Cyrus, in Derecho Rhythm Section), mutant electro-funk (in the quartet Damien, also with Cyrus) and doom-sludge riffery (with Feast Of Lanterns). Now, a record from a very different collaborative beast, with a longer history.
Sparhawk’s relationship with progressive, bluegrass/country-folk types Trampled By Turtles stretches back to their early days when they were mentees and mates of Low in Duluth, Minnesota. Sparhawk produced the Turtles’ Wild Animals in 2014 and they’ve played together many times, most crucially in the summer of 2023. When he was fathoms deep in grief, the sextet invited him to ride along for some tour dates and occasionally he joined them onstage. A recording hook-up had been talked about before but mindsets and schedules finally aligned late that year, when the group were in Cannon Falls’ Pachyderm Studio. Sparhawk joined them at the end of their session there and together they laid down nine tracks over just two afternoons, with no rehearsals and minimal overdubs.
Running at 33 fat-free minutes, With Tramped By Turtles is immediate evidence of their comfort as ensemble players. The songs – three of which were in development at the time of Parker’s death – are very much Sparhawk’s, but the group are not quite just his backing band. Neither are they jamming. The sense is of both parties yielding to the moment, guided by instinct and decades of fluency in their respective practices. Two songs, “Get Still” and “Heaven”, are reworkings of songs from White Roses…, with electronic stuttering and pitch-shifted vocals replaced by choral voices and plangent strings. As is standard for a bluegrass band, drums have no place here.
The set opens with “Stranger” and what suggests an acoustic overturn of “Psycho Killer”’s intro, its single, metronomic note soon swelled by other strings before Sparhawk’s melodic guitar line kicks in alongside ringing mandolin. The whole builds to an orchestral tide of gently thumping insistence, Sparhawk’s voice cutting through clean and strong as he reminds us, “You gotta put up with stranger [sic]/People that you know now/You gotta go through some dangerouser things than you thought you’d have to/You gotta do a little research before you say that you know”. Next is “Too High”; with sawing fiddle and banjo prominent, it adopts a different, more exultant string-band tone with a faint rock push, recalling a restrained Waterboys. Sparhawk uses the metaphor of songwriting to address relational (and self-)understanding: “We put the words to a melody and try to make it fit/Sometimes it kills you, but it sets you free/Cuts right through it”. It’s one of the songs that Sparhawk and Parker were working on during her last few years. “Not Broken” is a highlight, and frankly devastating in its Low-ness. Hollis Sparhawk’s sombre-sweet voice is a striking echo of Parker’s as she and her father individually repeat, “It’s not broken, I’m not angry,” before joining in harmony at its close.
At the album’s mid-point sits “Screaming Song”, in fact a clear-voiced account of the eye of grief’s storm. Initially set to a slow-mo, country tune in which Sparhawk admits, “I’m trying to be cool here but inside I’m screaming this song”, it then swells to a tumult, a squealing fiddle passage its punctum. After the inspired makeover of “Get Still” as a head-nodding meditation with a psych-soul shimmer comes the last of the Parker/Sparhawk sketches, an easy-rolling “Princess Road Surgery”. Here he reaches into his upper vocal register, guided by a chunky guitar rhythm. The set closes with “Torn & In Ashes”, its bittersweet strings carrying notes of exasperation and anger re life’s unfolding. “When will the last word be as the first?” Sparhawk asks. “Is it a circle or just reverse?/You turn down your eyes whenever asked why/Same fuckin’ answer every time.”
When interviewed last year around the release of White Roses…, Sparhawksaid of this follow-up, “I’m not sure what it means or what direction that means I’m going in, or if it’s more of a side thing, but I’m old enough now [to] try this, try that.” Diversity may be important but it’s not the only driver of his multiple projects. Sparhawk’s collaborative net is a close one and more than creative liberation, With Trampled By Turtles represents the uplift and support of community in hard times.
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