Alan Sparhawk — Not Broken

JUL 01 2025 · 12:00

Alan Sparhawk — Not Broken (2025) Director: Alexa Viscius Era: Post-Slowcore Grief Folk (2025) - Alan Sparhawk's second solo era, following the dissolution of Low after Mimi Parker's 2022 death; a turn from electronic abstraction toward acoustic Americana collaboration with Duluth bluegrass band Trampled by Turtles. High curatorial value as a primary document of one of indie music's most significant grief narratives of the 2020s. The video's stark, location-based black-and-white aesthetic — shot and directed by a Chicago-based photographer-director known for intimate, film-inflected portraiture — offers a rare convergence of personal biography, regional music community, and restrained visual craft. As a Sub Pop artifact from 2025, it contextualizes the label's continuing role in platforming emotionally challenging independent work. Recommended for Tier 1 archival treatment given its biographical weight, critical reception, and genre-historical positioning. Context: Released May 12, 2025, 'Not Broken' emerges from one of the most publicly documented grief journeys in contemporary indie music. Alan Sparhawk, co-founder of the acclaimed Duluth slowcore band Low, lost his wife and creative partner Mimi Parker to ovarian cancer in November 2022. This video and its accompanying album, With Trampled by Turtles (Sub Pop, May 30, 2025), represent Sparhawk's second post-Low solo release — a dramatic acoustic pivot from the electronic abstraction of his 2024 debut White Roses, My God. The collaboration with Trampled by Turtles, fellow Duluth musicians who mentored under Low, reflects a hyperlocal community of musical kinship. The album was recorded at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota in 2023, and nearly all tracks were captured in a single day with minimal overdubs. The video's black-and-white aesthetic and coastal imagery amplify the song's themes of perseverance, functioning less as promotion than as a document of continued artistic survival. Director notes: Viscius directed the official music video for 'Not Broken,' released May 12, 2025, as a single from Alan Sparhawk's album With Trampled by Turtles (Sub Pop). Per multiple press sources including Rolling Stone and Stereogum, the video is shot in stark black-and-white and features Sparhawk pacing a concrete walkway as waves crash around him. The visual treatment is described as 'stark,' consistent with the quantitative data showing near-zero saturation (15.82/255) and moderate-low brightness (104.12/255). The video's elemental, seascape-grounded imagery functions as a direct visual metaphor for the album's themes of endurance following grief. Perfect Duluth Day additionally credits Viscius as editor of the video.