Mimi Parker

“With the last couple of records, we were grappling with something outside of ourselves. This one feels more like, ‘Well, forget that. I'm looking in your eyes right now, and we need to figure out how to get through the next moment, together, as human beings. Alan Sparhawk “Most of our records just kind of fall together. There's not a lot of real forethought that goes into it, to be honest.” — Mimi Parker I don't think it's right to speculate too closely or seriously about the mental states and the personal lives of the musicians we love, by which I mean both that 1. I think it's invasive and illegitimate and a little icky and 2. I don't think it works. It's an open question whether we really know those closest to us, so the idea that we can discern the innermost thoughts, desires, and intentions of someone we don't know through lyrics, melodies, and interviews borders on the ridiculous or the insane. But that doesn't mean that fans don't construct narratives. It can be hard to follow a band for years and not feel like you know them, to move from feeling affection and warmth for just the music to transferring those feelings to the humans that make the music, to think that you discern unspoken hopes and conflicts and background. A group like Low, together since 1993 and consisting of married couple Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker and a bassist (for most of the band's life Zak Sally, for the last few years Steve Garrington), is especially rich ground for this kind of fandom. The band's story folds in the kind of long-running marital devotion unknown to most bands not called Yo La Tengo, religion (Alan and Mimi are both still, as far as I know, devout Mormons), politics (2007's fractious, harrowing, gorgeous volte face Drums and Guns expresses a level of discontent with modern American political life that is, frankly, stunning), mental health (Alan can tell you that he's had a rough couple of years), and music that ranges from the crystalline slowcore of their earlyRead More