Photo by Alexa Viscius

“I want to make you feel,” Alan Sparhawk sang, atypically so, last year on the original incarnation of “Get Still”, a highlight off the Low co-founder’s solo effort, White Roses, My God. At the time, Sparhawk was exploring creative means that were anything but human to convey his intentions — buzzing synthesizers, 808 beat patterns, and even mutating his voice into an alien-like transmission through the use of a pitch pedal — but it still had a way of entering your conscious in the most organic way. On the listen’s transformative reproduction with bluegrass jammers and fellow Deluthians, Tramples by Turtles, on his full-length follow-up, Sparhawk’s goal takes on a more definitive human form, and again goes beyond in power. Unfiltered harmonies replace synthetic sheaths, a trodden banjo, waning fiddle, deep bellowing bass lines and winds replace the listen’s electric heartbeat, as for Sparhawk, his voice is soberly raw. Though it has all of the touches of human flesh behind it, in this instance, it transcends into a grand spiritual feeling that reaches somewhere out there.

Directed by: Ingrid Weise

Alan Sparhawk’s With Trampled by Turtles will be released May 30th on Sub Pop.