Review: Duluth’s Alan Sparhawk offers unconventional expression of grief

POP/ROCK

Alan Sparhawk, “Can U Hear”

In September, Sparhawk of the long-running, boundary-pushing Duluth art-rock group Low will release his debut solo album, “White Roses, My God,” his first release since his bandmate and wife Mimi Parker died in 2022. “Can U Hear,” the album’s first single, is certainly an unconventional expression of grief, with its droning electronics, sputtering beat and eerie Auto-Tuned vocals. But that digitized wail is unmistakably mournful, and there is something admirably bold in the way Sparhawk, as ever, rejects the expected.

LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times

Kim Deal, “Coast”

“Coast,” a delightfully woozy solo single from the eternally cool Breeders frontwoman, begins with a kind of self-deprecating punchline: “I’ve had a hard, hard landing/I really should duck and roll out,” she sings in her inimitable voice, pausing to add with great comic timing, “Out of my life.” Deal has said that the song was inspired by a wedding band she saw cover “Margaritaville,” but part of the track’s charm is that despite its surf-rock lilt and buoyant horn section, she is never quite able to tap into those blissful vacation vibes. Instead, it is a song about shrugging and carrying on in spite of what bums you out; the fact that it was produced by Steve Albini, who died in May, adds an extra note of elegiac bittersweetness.

LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times

Joy Oladokun, “Drugs”

What seems like an idle complaint — “The drugs don’t work/Oh I can’t get high”— expands into a cry from the heart, as Oladokun sings about no longer being able to numb herself from rage, loneliness and “running on empty and calling it strength.” Luckily, she has a bluesy backbeat and gospel-choir harmonies to lift her spirits.

JON PARELES, New York Times

R&B/HIP-HOP

Childish Gambino featuring Jorja Smith and Amaarae, “In the Night”

Gambino — aka Donald Glover — is a crooner, not a rapper, in this song about overlapping betrayals from what’s billed as his final Childish Gambino album, “Bando Stone & the New World.” The singer is fixated on a woman who’s with another man who adores her, suggesting, “Just ‘cause you’re sweet don’t make you loyal.” English R&B songwriter Smith confesses, “Last night I said it was his baby” and warns, “I have to sneak around ‘cause he could never know.” Then the helium-voiced Ghanaian-American singer Amaarae catches him kissing other women. The whole tangle is revealed amid a furtive, muffled beat and wisps of vocal harmony, as if it can’t be concealed any longer.

JON PARELES, New York Times

New releases

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