Mimi

Homage to the late Mimi Parker

Mimi Parker passed away this past weekend after a two-year battle with cancer. Parker co-founded and co-fronted the heralded Duluth, Minnesota-based slowcore band Low. Acting as drummer and vocalist, Parker wove a delicate and tender thread through the slow BPMs and somber hue of Low’s music. Highly regarded for her perfect vibrato, Parker also imbued purely otherworldly vocal harmonies with Alan Sparhawk, husband and guitarist of the band.

I can recall the exact moment in time when I first heard of Low. I was standing in line to pay my tuition my freshman year in college, I noticed a sort of “alternative” guy standing in front of me. We started making small talk to ease the sluggish pace of the queue. Conversation drifted to what kind of music each of us listened to. When posed to him he answered, “I listen to really slow and really sad music. My favorite is this band from Minnesota called LOW.” He explained the sound and my interest was piqued. That was 1999; right after their seminal Secret Name album was released. I quickly fell in love and familiarized myself with their back-catalog. I saw Low perform live first in 2001 as part of the CMJ Festival in NYC at the Bowery Ballroom (image). A decade later in 2011 at Radio City Music Hall and finally for a third time in 2016 at The Parish in Austin. The latter of which, to this day, I tout as perhaps the best-sounding live show I’ve ever seen — or been a part of. Meticulous clarity existed in every instrument. Crisp dynamics, perfect rhythms and an ironclad tuning in the helix of vocal harmonies pirouetting between Sparhawk and Parker.

Parker’s proverbial voice has been a steadfast and haunting-yet-calming lullaby throughout the last 20+ years of my own music-making and intentional listening. A couple dozen Low songs have forever secured a place at the top of my mind as some of the most beautiful music ever created — music I’ll perpetually return to in an effort to suspend myself in that beautiful, introspective palace they’ve built. I have 7 of their full-lengths on vinyl and admire their attention to detail and persevering strictness to the utmost standards of quality in the physical product of their music. As notated on the exterior hype sticker on the LP jackets, most of their releases are “AAA” — meaning the recording, mixing and mastering were 100% analog and done to/on tape, as opposed to via computer or with aid of any digital processing. The all-analog method is increasingly rare, far more time consuming and is a wildly less economic way to produce music; but one that yields a truly richer sonic saturation and parlays an inherent lushness in the music — a nuance often void from most of modern recorded music being made today.

Low has been a slow-burning act. With a steady trajectory in releases, and subsequent tours, their success was anything but overnight. However, in recent years Low began gaining some deeply critical acclaim for their music on a larger scale. At which, they found themselves playing in much larger venues and to often sold out audiences across the globe. Their live oeuvre always portioned-out a balanced melange of older material which focused on simple melodies, minimalism and the space between notes, across to more adventurous production techniques and experimental dynamism as found between 2018’s Double Negative and their most-recent release Hey What in 2021.

Since 1994, Low has released 13 studio albums, numerous EPs, a box set of rarities, as well as a DVD chronicling an early European tour. The breadth of this output from a range of labels beginning with Plain Recordings, Vernon Yard, Kranky, Temporary Residence and Seattle’s Sub Pop — who has released all of their material since 2004. Parker was 55 at the time of her death and is survived by her husband Alan and their two children Hollis and Cyrus.

Find a playlist via Spotify (below) and via Tidal with my favorite selections across Low’s expansive catalog.

Below: an ode to Mimi from the hi-fi speaker designer and audiophile John DeVore.