New Albums
Q&A
Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk talk tolerance, distortion and a whole new planet of sound
NATHAN KEAY; FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES
How has the past year been?
ALAN SPARHAWK: When quarantine hit, we’d just finished touring, and we were going to take a little time off and get ready for recording. It sort of fit into the cycle. We were in the trajectory of working on stuff, we had a few songs. That, and the Friday Instagrams helped us use the time to our advantage.
What did you get out of the Instagram live performances? Was it a useful way of workshopping new material?
SPARHAWK: For sure, we were able to work on the new songs and it kind of helped us stay in touch with what we were doing. For the last couple of decades, we’ve always been so dependent on having something coming up, you know? It would define what you’d be doing each day [laughs]. So without that, it’s surprisingly crippling. We’ve been slacking on it a bit. We don’t do it every week but I’ve kind of been missing it. It keeps me on my toes!