Low’s Alan Sparhawk vividly remembers the day last summer he got the news that Robert Plant was going to record two Low songs – “Silver Rider” and “Monkey” -- on his 2010 studio album, “Band of Joy.”
“It was a surprise, a big surprise” he says. “I mean, there are a few singers like Plant, Streisand – singers who are the ultimate when you think about someone singing one of your songs. The longer I do this, the more I have to admit to myself that I write songs, the more I have to wonder if any of them are any good. So to get something like this puts a little smile on my ego.”
The erstwhile "golden god" of '70s hard rock ended up getting a Grammy nomination for “Silver Rider.” It was quite possibly the most high-profile, mainstream recognition the trio from Duluth, Minn., has ever received. For Low fans, it was long overdue.
Sparhawk; his wife, Mimi Parker; and a rotating cast of bass players, most recently Steve Garrington, have kept a pretty low profile over two decades, despite releasing enough stellar albums to fill their own rarefied niche: the slowest, quietest, most beautiful -- and beautifully disturbing -- band on earth.
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With his long-running trio Low, singer-guitarist Alan Sparhawk explores the possibilities of playing as quietly and deliberately as possible. Over two decades, Low has made some of the most gorgeous music of its time, with a premium placed on space, silence and hymn-like melodies.
Now comes Retribution Gospel Choir, another trio that includes drummer Eric Pollard and Low bassist Scott Garrington. It would be easy to characterize the band as the anti-Low with its love of volume and distortion, a reaction against what Sparhawk does in his other band. But as is usually the case with the guitarist, it’s not quite that simple.
“I can see where it could be perceived as a release from what Low would allow,” Sparhawk says. “But it’s not that. It’s more like the people I’m playing with."
“With Low, for sure, it’s very much Mimi and I,” he adds, referring to his wife, Mimi Parker, who is Low’s other singer and percussionist. “She’s very much the tone and the spirit of that band. As much as it may sound confining, she is the rulebook, she is the tone that I am aspiring to when making music in Low.”
Continue reading "Retribution Gospel Choir: Low's Alan Sparhawk rediscovers the joy of volume, volume, volume" »