White Roses, My God

The result is a record is suffused with grief without ever drowning in it (or, for the most part, addressing it directly in the lyrics even when you can parse them out).

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.

White Roses, My God won’t be for all Low fans, and though—perhaps as with the strangely comparable posthumous SOPHIE album—its reception will certainly be softened by goodwill, it stands alone. Sparhawk releasing a record this immediate and inchoate feels like a gesture of faith, in both listeners’ patience and the musical futures it might yet bloom.

This is a record that is sometimes hard to hear, and not just because of Sparhawk’s stylistic volte-face. Hollis’s delicate, Parker-esque backing vocals hit like a truck on Heaven.

Sparhawk's plastic electronics are less invasive but still serve to create a new reality, sublimating the sadness and anger to a degree where they are less raw and more manageable.

It may be somewhat unexpected in form, but its compelling content should come as no surprise. [Aug - Oct 2024, p.107]

A difficult record for many reasons, but an ineffably beautiful one, too. [Nov 20224, p.89]

Look for signs of grief if you must, but Sparhawk's return is a dramatic adventure on any terms. [Oct 2024, p.103]

It may surprise some, and disappoint others, but this is a record that ultimately finds Sparhawk turning pain into a kind of spiritual beauty. In that, it continues his work of over three decades, from the spectral I Could Live In Hope right up to the imploded noise of Hey What. [Sep 2024, p.22]

The gothic menace familiar to Low’s output is taken in a more playful direction, set to rattling contemporary beats. But while Sparhawk avoids plumbing the deepest wells of his grief too explicitly, its presence is impossible to miss.

Working with whimsicality as much as grief, Sparhawk reinvents himself, exploring inner landscapes and imaginary worlds, all while having a bit of fun.

He's as present and raw beneath the computer voice as he's ever been, but with these darkroom synth tracks, Sparhawk makes his audience work a little harder to locate him.

White Roses, My God is an often compelling experiment, but it’s hard not to suspect that its bold, often inscrutable excursions into alien territory ultimately undersell Sparhawk’s immense gifts as a musical communicator.