Mimi Parker Obituary, Death – Due to complications from ovarian cancer, Mimi Parker, a former member of the American alternative rock band Low, went suddenly at the age of 55. She was well-known for the deep, unsettling intensity of her voice. Her voice had an effect on the listener that was sometimes icy, sometimes heavenly, and always enthralling. Her voice had an affect on the listener. Her exquisite brushwork on the drums added to the wonderful harmonies that she frequently sang with her bandmate and husband Alan Sparhawk, who was also a member of the band. On songs such as “In Metal,” where they harmonized to a “degree of claustrophobic perfection,” according to a Guardian review of the 2001 album Things We Lost in the Fire, and “Monkey” from “The Great Destroyer” (2005), which was later covered by Robert Plant, it was frequently as if the couple were sharing the same breath. They would round off consonants with the same control and measure.
Parker was naturally reserved and quiet; yet, during the course of Low’s 30-year recording history, he began to come out from behind Sparhawk’s more boisterous character and take on lead vocals on a more regular basis. She did this while still playing her basic drum set, which included a floor tom, cymbal, and snare, while standing straight in the center of the stage while wearing a baggy jumper and brown curls. Her drum equipment consisted of a floor tom, a cymbal, and a snare. A few of her lead tracks served as evidence of how capable she was of standing on her own. She speaks about the special draw of religion in a perilous world while making use of a subtle vibrato to accompany her rich, gorgeous delivery in the song Holy Ghost from The Invisible Way (2013), which Mavis Staples subsequently recorded.
Her voice is energizing and rhythmic in the song “Just Make It Stop,” which is off of the same album. Her singing had the lovely but insistent lilt of country music, which gave it the reassuring confidence of a country vocalist. Despite the fact that Low never achieved any major breakthrough successes, the band had a substantial fan base, particularly in the United Kingdom, as well as numerous celebrity fans. Plant was captivated by “the way Mimi Parker hangs on every vocal line after she’s finished – it was so seductive and so dark” when he first heard the band crooning out of the radio in the United States while he was a resident there.
Plant was a fan of “the way Mimi Parker hangs on every vocal line after she’s finished.” When asked to choose the 18 songs that best characterized his career, including his time spent in Led Zeppelin, Plant selected Silver Rider and Monkey, two songs from Low that he has performed, as two of the best examples of his work.
