Alan Sparhawk review – beautiful, obliterating hymns to Low’s Mimi Parker

<p><strong>Le Guess Who festival, Utrecht</strong><br>Sparhawk’s solo debut starts with a jazzy red herring that gives way to a set list of brand new songs which mine the depths of grief for his late wife and bandmate</p><p>This time last year, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/low">Low</a> were due to headline Le Guess Who, an experimental music festival in Utrecht. Instead, the beloved US indie band had to cancel their tour dates owing to the declining health of singer and drummer Mimi Parker, who had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer two years prior. On 5 November 2022, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/nov/06/low-drummer-and-vocalist-mimi-parker-has-died">she died at home</a> in Duluth, Minnesota, aged 55. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/nov/07/lows-mimi-parker-was-a-voice-of-hope-and-healing-in-indie-rock">Her loss</a> essentially brought to an end the haunting, hymnal group that she and husband Alan Sparhawk formed in 1993, having first met in primary school, and which had entered a period of near warp-speed evolution in their final two albums, 2018’s distorted, furious <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/sep/14/low-double-negative-review-the-sound-of-the-world-unravelling">Double Negative</a> and 2021’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/09/low-hey-what-review">Hey What</a>.</p><p>Until this return to Le Guess Who, Sparhawk has only performed music in Duluth and in Minneapolis, in two bands that include their son, Cyrus, as a member (they also have a daughter, Hollis): the Roy Ayers and Curtis Mayfield-inspired funk outfit Derecho and Afro-Cuban four-piece Damien, in which Sparhawk has been known to perform dressed as a ship’s captain. On Saturday night to a packed Protestant church, it initially seems as though his highly anticipated s