Alan Sparhawk is in good company on With Trampled by Turtles

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. The album’s abstracted and harsh electronic clatter may have been a vital therapeutic outlet and a route for different means of self-expression for Sparhawk. Even so, the often seemingly semi-improvised tracks, constructed with electronic tools the musician wasn’t yet fully familiar with, and – crucially – with Sparhawk’s voice rendered entirely unrecognizable, even unintelligible by radical digital manipulation, White Roses, My God proved to be a claustrophobic experience, heavy like the air before a colossal storm, with the listener being kept at an arm’s length from the resonant emotional reckoning bubbling beneath the disfiguring distortions.

In stark contrast, With Trampled by Turtles virtually reverberates with raw, unfiltered emotion. Listening to the more unguardedly wounded songs on the album, you can deduce why Sparhawk felt the need to don a digital disguise on White Roses, My God. One of the highlights of last year’s duo shows with Sparhawk’s son Cyrus, “The Screaming Song” depicts the exact moment of loss and the crushing grief that weighs in afterwards with heart-wrenching, naked pain, with Sparhawk’s prolonged scream from the live shows replaced by a screeching violin. The mournful, haunting “Don’t Take Your Light” could double up as a bereaved plea to hold on to the spirit of a late loved one and a prayer against losing faith. One of the two songs revisited in more organic and direct form from White Roses, My God, “Heaven” throbs with a deep and profoundly moving longing that was previously capsized by electronic effects.

Somehow, With Trampled with Turtles combines the emotional heaviness and wounded introspection seamlessly with the palpable, communal joy of playing and singing music in good company. Similarly to its predecessor, the album is rooted in spontaneity and refreshing lack of meticulous advance planning. The story has it that Sparhawk showed up to a studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota where Trampled by Turtles were wrapping up a recording session towards the end of 2023 and proceeded to cut these nine tunes he had stockpiled with his fellow Duluthians (who had invited Sparhawk to join them on tour with no obligation to perform following Parker’s passing) in not much more than a single day. Simultaneously humbly low-key and subtly majestic, quickly patched together and wholly cohesive, the rootsy results crackle with the same spontaneous first take, best take alchemy as the finest works of Neil Young and Crazy Horse (Young is notably a firm favourite of Sparhawk, who plays in Tired Eyes, a Minnesotan tribute to the Canadian legend): this is audibly a closeknit and fraternal group of musicians who know instinctively what is (and isn’t) needed to allow the songs to shine at optimal voltage.

Never more so than on highlight “Not Broken”. Led by cello, the gorgeously bruised song finds Sparhawk (who is in remarkably powerful voice throughout the album: it’s unlikely he’s ever thrown himself into vocal performances as fully and unguardedly as he does here) soar majestically over the band’s organically sparse, country-hued backing, before the song turns into a duet with between Sparhawk and his daughter Hollis, whose familiar yet fresh tones offer a poignant flashback to Low’s trademark male/female harmonies while also pointing to new musical destinations.