by Marissa Lorusso for NPR Music –
Last weekend, singer and drummer Mimi Parker, of the critically acclaimed rock band Low, died. She was 55, and had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2020. Parker’s voice was singular and her contributions were essential to the band’s sound.
My colleague Stephen Thompson wrote about listening to Parker for three decades, and I think he really captures what made her so remarkable. “Even as the Minnesota band’s sound grew busier, darker and more challenging, Parker remained an artist of uncommon restraint,” he writes. “She drummed with brushes and mallets, her words restricted to an impactful minimum. But even when she ceded the vocal spotlight to her musical partner and husband, Alan Sparhawk, her presence was unwavering, unpretentious, commanding, vital.”
If you aren’t familiar with Low’s music, Stephen suggests “The Plan,” a beautiful track from the band’s early days. I first heard Low’s music when a friend showed me the 2001 album Things We Lost In The Fire, the band’s fifth album, which opens with “Sunflower.” And although I encountered it about a decade after it was released, I felt like I had never heard anything else like it before. I was immediately transfixed by the band’s thoughtful, minimalist and patient sound — exactly that powerful restraint Stephen mentioned — and the intense beauty of Parker and Sparhawk’s harmonies. The music was my gateway to falling in love with many slowcore artists who were Low’s peers and inheritors, and Things We Lost In The Fire is still a record I turn to often.
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