DULUTH — Alan Sparhawk and a band of Duluth musicians played a set Saturday at
a music festival in the Netherlands,
wowing one prominent critic with a set of “beautiful, obliterating new songs” written in grief for the late Mimi Parker.
Contributed / Rich Narum
Parker, Sparhawk’s spouse as well as his longtime bandmate in the revered Duluth group Low,
in November 2022. While mourning, Sparhawk has remained musically active with projects including
Two of that band’s members — Sparhawk’s bassist son, Cyrus, and drummer Owen Mahon, of New Salty Dog — also played with the singer-songwriter-guitarist at the Le Guess Who? festival Saturday.
Sparhawk was additionally joined by banjo player Dave Carroll, of Trampled By Turtles. The “Alan Sparhawk Solo Band,” as Sparhawk has
it, played earlier this month at the Turf Club in St. Paul.
Sparhawk and Mahon
as part of the
in October at Wussow’s Concert Cafe in Duluth. “It was a fabulous show,” wrote venue owner Jason Wussow in an email to the News Tribune.
In
critic Laura Snapes accorded Sparhawk’s Utrecht, Netherlands festival performance a perfect five out of five stars. The songs generally reflect on the loss of Sparhawk’s partner, wrote Snapes, with some of them “piercingly direct in their desperate evocations of loss, raw and shellshocked.” Many attendees were in tears, she reported.
Sparhawk and his band are continuing to
in Spain and Portugal. In a
before the Le Guess Who? appearance, Sparhawk called it “a classic ‘throw and go’ gig — set up quick, no soundcheck, go when they say go. A dreaded scenario but it usually goes better than you think it will.”
Arts and entertainment reporter Jay Gabler joined the Duluth News Tribune in 2022. His previous experience includes eight years as a digital producer at The Current (Minnesota Public Radio), four years as theater critic at Minneapolis alt-weekly City Pages, and six years as arts editor at the Twin Cities Daily Planet. He’s a co-founder of pop culture and creative writing blog The Tangential; he’s also a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Minnesota Film Critics Alliance. You can reach him at jgabler@duluthnews.com or 218-279-5536.
