Remembering Low's Mimi Parker

When Mimi Parker died on 5 November – at 55-years-old, as a result of her diagnosis of ovarian cancer – Low, the consistently brilliant musical project she was a part of for nearly three decades, lost a member. Parker may have been one half of Low, but she was an absolute whole in a relationship.

In both instances, this was alongside her husband Alan Sparhawk, another absolute whole. Their partnership, a symbol of persistence and enduring love, ultimately epitomised Low. Not that their relationship was particularly public, though struggles with Sparhawk’s mental health and the strain it placed on them was not hidden. But those qualities were infused in the music they made together, the way their voices overlapped, either in direct harmony or one following the other as if tied together by rope. In a heartfelt letter eulogising Parker, one-time Low bassist Zak Sally wrote: “[Mimi was] just as happy singing at home with Alan to nobody.” This is a truth that seems so evident on their recordings – which recently Jeff Tweedy aptly described as a kind of “secular church music” – what many have described as an unpretentious approach to creativity. Her death signals, perhaps, the end of a beloved band. But, more importantly, the severing of one creative soulmate from another.

In Low, Parker was a singer and drummer. For their minimalist slowcore (a genre signifier Low pushed back against) her voice was an anchor. When writing on women’s voices in these musical styles turned to reductive descriptors like “ethereal” and “otherworldly”, you could not say that about Parker’s. Her vocals are earthly, grounding Low’s often ghostly music in reality. They showcased strength. They are crushingly human. On the title track of Low’s most recent album, HEY WHAT, when the song drifts off into the ocean, Parker’s singing crashes through the waves of ambient noise tugging the listener back up. No matter what her singing was surrounded by – on early albums, as if emanating from a damp, dimly lit corner, or more recently outlined by fiery shoegaze – they were never engulfed, always the brightest thing in the room. 

In an interview with experimental music publication Tone Glow last year, Parker said Sparhawk was “always trying to see what can happen” when they were making music. “And she’s the control valve for that,” Sparhawk interjected. This suggests the idea that Parker approached her artistry with an open-mindedness but also with a willingness to be a conduit, a mechanism for Low to be something truly great. Nowhere is that more obvious than on the astounding sonic developments on their two most recent albums, which recalibrate the Low sound into something noisy and loud and chaotic.

Not only are they two of the great late career pivots, but they are also two of the best albums of recent times. On HEY WHAT, Parker’s transformation is significant. From her early stripped back, effective drumming, to something approaching rock'n'roll on The Great Destroyer, here she accepted foregoing discernible drumming altogether in pursuit of a higher purpose. When her percussion finally appears on the closing track The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off), it is utterly cataclysmic.

Parker was Mormon, converting after meeting Sparhawk in high school. To those with agnostic and atheistic tendencies, their religious devotion and spirituality could perhaps seem in conflict with Low’s progressive musicality. But it’s this juxtaposition which powered their art. In the Tone Glow interview, Parker was asked about her relationship with God. She said: “When it comes to faith, I think it’s healthy to doubt. If you’re not checking it, you’re missing out… I don’t know, that sort of thing is just so foreign to me. Blind faith.” It was this attitude – a healthy back and forth with your beliefs – that allowed Parker to tap into everything Low exhumed in their songs: despair, outrage, skepticism, and a questioning of authority, among them.

But that inquisitiveness never allowed the joy and comfort that faith and spirituality can bring to be blocked out. We need only look to Parker’s words on Double Negative's Fly to feel consolation in her passing, which she sang with her usual transcendent beauty: 'I don’t mind. Take my weary bones, and fly'.