Suffused with a warmth, tenderness and powerful melancholy and grief, this second solo album by the Low co-founder since the death in 2022 of his wife and lifelong creative Mimi Parker joins him with the fabulous fellow Duluth, Minnesota bluegrass and folk band Trampled By Turtles. While last year’s first album since her passing, White Roses, My God album was more experimental, electronica and minimalist, this is all acoustic – suffused with guitars, banjo, mandolin, cello, violin, and percussion, and somehow brings his songwriting and voice out to greater and more moving intensity. The songs are still very much coloured by the death of Parker after her two-year battle with cancer, but there’s a positive twist, with their daughter Hollis joining on the gorgeous Not Broken, her backing vocals uncannily, and magically similar to that of her mother. There’s a cross-genre here of form of chamber folk, as also on Too High and Heaven, particularly with Eamonn McLain's cello, alongside banjo and mandolin. Opener Stranger is another highlight, as well as Get Still, and the slow, beautiful closer Torn & In Ashes, with gentle swells banjo and mandolin, but the greatest intensity comes in Screaming Song, Sparhawk’s lyrics baring his grief in full view, and recreated with a heartbreaking weeping and wailing on fiddle and cello. “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, so I took in some more, And I started to scream even louder, The screaming goes on for hours, And days, So if you and I love is forever, Then I'll probably be screaming that long, I'm trying to be cool here, But inside I'm screaming this song.” Powerful, candid, sensitive, tragic, but also intensely beautiful, and hopefully also cathartic. Out on Sub Pop.
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