Album Review: With Trampled By Turtles by Alan Sparhawk

Whatever you expected the guitarist, singer and songwriter renowned for gnarly electric guitar expeditions to do next, a banjo-flecked album sprinkled with warm communal harmonies with a bluegrass group (albeit a decidedly hip one in a scene infused with a fondness for olden times traditions) probably didn't rank very high on the list of probabilities. Despite its unexpected predominantly acoustic textures and grass-stained rootsy terrains, With Trampled by Turtles should be welcomed as a triumphant return to more standard service for Sparhawk. With hindsight, it's easy to see last year's White Roses, My God as a necessarily inarticulate musical outpouring of grief, trauma and loss after the tragic death in 2022 of Low's drummer and singer Mimi Parker, Sparhawk's partner in life and music for three decades.

Full Review >>

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.

Full Review >>

Alan Sparhawk shouldn't need any introductions. So, we won't give him one, other than saying he was a member of one of the greatest bands of the last 30 years, Low, and is one of the finest songwriters of his generation. With Trampled by Turtles is more folk than his last neon-pop album, 2024's White Roses, My God, but die-hard Low fans should lap it up.

Full Review >>

Man, this Alan Sparhawk guy. What a legacy, huh? For nearly thirty years, until the untimely passing from cancer of his partner in life and music Mimi Parker brought an equally untimely end to the band, slowcore OGs Low could seemingly do no wrong. They are, I think, one of the rare cases where a band's later, genre-defying music arguably eclipses its earlier genre-defining output.

Full Review >>