Parker passed away in 2022 after a long battle with cancer, and there is no question that WHITE ROSES, MY GOD is a record borne of grief. You can hear it in the title, as well as tracks such as "Heaven", in which Sparhawk describes the afterlife, wrenchingly, as "a lonely place if you're alone." You can sense it too in Sparhawk's decision to create this thing entirely on his own: every note, every lyric, every programmed beat. It would be reductive, even foolish, to see grief as the sole source or the final limit of this taut, brilliant, provocative, thrilling album, whose bold experimentation is powered by profound lyrics and propulsive beats. "Can you feel something here?" Sparhawk asks on "Feel Something." The line repeats over and over, evolving first into "I want to feel something here" and then "Can you help me feel something here?" Meanwhile the musical means he's chosen to convey this message-especially the pitch-shifter-might seem at first like they're making it harder to access that very something he wants us (and himself) to feel. Isn't the vocoder a barrier between us and the deep emotionality we've long associated with an Alan Sparhawk vocal? Maybe, maybe not. Probably not. But even if it is, then it's a barrier worth breaking and the music itself is the hammer. Sparhawk conjures forth the ghosts trapped inside these machines. WHITE ROSES, MY GOD is an exorcism whose purpose is not to banish the spirit but to set it free. In many ways WHITE ROSES, MY GOD feels like a hard break with the past, almost a debut. And yet there's incredible continuity with Sparhawk's past work and his traditional ways of working. He's pathbreaking, yet again, invested as ever in the endless process of becoming himself. As he puts it on "Station": "I can please myself with the things I seek out." Us, too. We are lucky to be here to hear it as it happens.