Music Review: Monk Parker, How The Spark Loves The Tinder

By Melissa Bratcher

Monk Parker’s solo debut album How The Spark Loves The Tinder could be filed under alt-Americana, but what it really brings to mind is if an alien recorded an Americana album. Everything is there: harmonicas, strings, horns, guitar, hushed husky vocals, but it’s all a little… off. It’s brilliant. It’s alien Americana.

How The Spark Loves The Tinder was written during the breakup of Parker’s band The Low Lows, and his subsequent relocation from New York to Texas. I can’t imagine this album being recorded in New York. It has the feeling of wide open spaces, dying embers of campfires, the rustling of leaves in trees. It’s a massive album, but it’s also hazy. At times, How The Spark Loves The Tinder feels like having water in your ears. You know all of the elements are there, but it’s layers are muted and foggy.

Recorded over hundreds of hours (in a welding shed!) with over 30 musicians, including members of Okkervil River and the Polyphonic Spree, How The Spark Loves The Tinder has a consistency and a solid ambiance. It’s dreamy, like on the vast, atmospheric “The Happy Hours” with layers of reverb and subsonic strings. “I Am A Gun” is both intimate and huge in scope, with a hushed clarinet that flits like a firefly. It’s not quite ramshackle, but it is rough hewn: open, expansive, and expressionistic, right down to Parker’s vocals. “Wanna Be Forgotten” could almost be called rollicking, like dampened from a midway, with crushed organ and chugging drums. There’s a bit of a highland reel buried in the barrage of horns.

“Idle In Idlewild” is a big folky song, glacially strummed. A ballad sung in Parker’s velvet gruff of a voice, it’s a fading campfire song, a secret story told in the darkness. “The Great Fires” is otherworldly with soft horns and swaying guitars. The instrumental “Black Bees” is elegant and glorious, swelling to a startling break.

Monk Parker’s How The Spark Loves The Tinder is a magisterial album, heavy with echoes and reverb. The songcraft is exquisite; it’s immersive, beautiful, and phantasmagoric, but grounded in the earth. It’s a stunning debut.

How The Spark Loves The Tinder was released on August 28 from Bronze Rat.

Tour Dates:
8/26 – Tucson, AZ – Flycatcher
8/27 – Phoenix, AZ – Valley Bar
8/28 – Los Angeles, CA – The Satellite
8/30 – San Francisco, CA – Hotel Utah
9/03 – Seattle, WA – The Lofi
9/4 – Spokane, WA – The Bartlett
9/5 – Portland, OR – Bunk Bar
9/6 – Eugene, OR – Sam’s Bond Garage