Alan Sparhawk White Roses, My God
Alan Sparhawk's White Roses, My God reframes mourning through skittering electronics and intimate restraint, turning grief into a restless, often buoyant set of songs that critics call both unsettling and oddly consoling. Across 11 professional reviews the record earned a 79.18/100 consensus score, and reviewers consistently point to a handful of tracks that anchor the album's strange emotional logic.
Critics agree that the best songs on White Roses, My God balance raw feeling with deliberate experimentation. “I Made This Beat” repeatedly surfaces as the album's kinetic centerpiece, praised for its infectious pulse and ecstatic immediacy. “Feel Something” and “Heaven” are named in multiple reviews as moments where Sparhawk's processed vocals and family collaborations lend haunting clarity, while “Get Still” and “Somebody Else's Room” crystallize the record's mix of minimalist electronica, pop-leaning rhythms and plaintive melody. Reviewers highlight themes of loss, vocal mutation, technology as voice and the tension between innocence and jadedness, noting that the production often foregrounds machine-human contrast and repetition to turn sorrow into propulsive, sometimes club-adjacent music.
While many critics celebrate the album's willingness to trade Low's hush for bleached, mantra-like fragments and trap-influenced beats, some reviewers find portions sketchy or underrealized, describing the record as provocative rather than uniformly triumphant. The professional reviews collectively suggest that White Roses, My God is worth attention for listeners seeking the best songs on the record and for those curious how grief can be transmuted into experimental pop. Below, the full reviews unpack where the record succeeds best and where its risks may leave some listeners divided.
Critics' Top Tracks
The standout songs that made critics take notice
I Made This Beat
8 mentions
"‘I Made This Beat’ is part mantra, part banger"— Clash Music
Heaven
7 mentions
"“Heaven,” he sings on a beautiful, scrap-like song"— Pitchfork
Feel Something
9 mentions
"The standout track on the album is ‘Feel Something’."— Clash Music
‘I Made This Beat’ is part mantra, part banger
Track Ratings
How critics rated each track, relative to this album (0-100). Only tracks that made critics feel something are rated.
Get Still
I Made This Beat
Not the 1
Can U Hear
Heaven
Brother
Black Water
Feel Something
Station
Somebody Else's Room
Project 4 Ever
What Critics Are Saying
Deep insights from 11 critics who reviewed this album
Critic's Take
In this review, Alan Sparhawk's White Roses, My God is framed as an album born of grief and small consolations, where tracks like “Heaven” and “Brother” surface as the record's most affecting moments. The writer's language is intimate and observant, insisting that the best songs on White Roses, My God find power in restraint and familiar comforts. Readers searching for the best tracks on White Roses, My God will be drawn to the way “Heaven” anchors the album and how “Brother” softens its edges, each song revealing Sparhawk's need to express without excess. The review privileges emotional clarity over grand gestures, recommending those two songs as entry points to the album's quieter strengths.
Key Points
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The best song is best because it channels grief into quiet, consoling expression.
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The album's core strengths are emotional clarity, restraint, and intimacy in songwriting.
Themes
Critic's Take
Alan Sparhawk's White Roses, My God finds its best tracks in the intimate, machine-fractured moments that feel most honest, notably “Feel Something” and “Project 4 Ever”. The reviewer's tone mixes careful tenderness with admiration for Sparhawk's restless exploration, praising how “Feel Something” breaks through numbness and how “Project 4 Ever” closes with haunting, hopeful clarity. Attention is drawn to the bold reinvention across songs like “Get Still” and “Can U Hear”, which show how grief can be transmuted into kinetic, human music. This is a record whose best songs are those that marry experiment and emotion, making clear why listeners searching for the best tracks on White Roses, My God will return to these moments.
Key Points
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The best song, "Feel Something", breaks through numbness with processed vocals and a cathartic payoff.
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The album's core strength is transforming grief into brave, machine-driven yet human music that searches for catharsis.
Themes
Critic's Take
Laura Snapes writes in a vivid, elegiac register that the best songs on White Roses, My God are urgently physical - notably “I Made This Beat” and “Get Still” - where blown-out electronics and mutated vocals turn mourning into a strange, propulsive music. She frames Sparhawk's work as brazenly un-Low, a raw, staticky expedition that finds coherence in mantra-like fragments, so the best tracks on White Roses, My God feel like small miracles of invention. The voice processing and Hollis's wordless calls give songs like “Get Still” and “Heaven” their emotional thrust, making them the record's clearest moments of connection. Snapes's tone is both admiring and frank - she applauds the album's willingness to be rudimentary and anarchically fun while recognising its divisive, inhuman textures.
Key Points
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“I Made This Beat” is best because its defiant repetition and evolving production turn rudimentary tools into a triumph.
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The album's core strength is transforming intimate grief into inventive, blown-out electronic experiments that feel both raw and strangely communal.
Themes
Th
Critic's Take
Alan Sparhawk turns grief into something oddly buoyant on White Roses, My God, where processed vocals and brittle electronics make for a peculiar poise. Kitty Empire highlights club-adjacent grit on “I Made This Beat” and the crushing backing vocals on “Heaven”, arguing these best tracks show how Sparhawk’s skeletal digital songs balance brutality and tenderness. The record reads as a hyperpop-flavored experiment that still carries the slowcore soul of his past, so listeners asking for the best songs on White Roses, My God should start with “I Made This Beat” and “Heaven”.
Key Points
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The best song, “I Made This Beat”, is praised for its defiant, club-adjacent chant and contemporary vocodered production.
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The album's core strengths are its handling of grief through processed vocals, familial contributions, and a blend of brutal repetition with bittersweet electronics.
Themes
Critic's Take
On White Roses, My God Alan Sparhawk reconfigures grief into oddly catchy songs, with “I Made This Beat” and “Somebody Else’s Room” standing out as the best tracks on the album. Amen writes with a calm analytical warmth, noting how “I Made This Beat” couples an infectious pulse with guileless melody while “Somebody Else’s Room” is the album’s most innovatively catchy tune. The record balances humanistic concern and electronic playfulness, so queries about the best songs on White Roses, My God should start with those two tracks. This is an adventurous reinvention that still traffics in salvation and exile, mixing whimsy with grief in ways that reward repeat listens.
Key Points
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The best song is "Somebody Else’s Room" because the reviewer calls it the album’s most innovatively catchy tune and playlist-worthy.
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The album’s core strengths are its blend of humanistic themes and playful electronic pop that reframes grief as inventive, emotionally resonant songwriting.
Themes
Critic's Take
Alan Sparhawk's White Roses, My God finds its best tracks in moments where grief and pop sheen collide, particularly “Feel Something” and the opener “Get Still”. The reviewer leans into the surprise of hearing Sparhawk trade Low's hush for trap beats and processed vocals, celebrating how “Get Still” ushers you from confusion to familiarity. He names “Feel Something” the standout, citing the repeated line “I wanna feel something here” as the point where grief becomes mesmerising. This is framed as an upbeat, thrilling solo turn rather than a downer, which explains why listeners searching for the best songs on White Roses, My God should start with those tracks.
Key Points
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The best song, “Feel Something”, is the standout because its repeated, aching lines make grief feel mesmerising.
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The album's core strengths are bold production choices, emotional vocal delivery, and a surprising blend of trap-inflected beats with Sparhawk's expressive songwriting.
Themes
Critic's Take
Alan Sparhawk's White Roses, My God feels like a raw sketchbook turned into a moving record, with the best songs emerging from that tension. The review consistently praises “I Made This Beat” for its ecstatic immediacy and names “Heaven” and “Somebody Else’s Room” as hauntingly poignant, so listeners asking "best tracks on White Roses, My God" should start there. The voice is spare and direct, celebratory of moments where joy and grief collide, and those three tracks most clearly embody that uneasy beauty. Overall, the album's experimental minimalism makes the standout songs feel both intimate and unsettling, which is precisely the point.
Key Points
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The best song is "I Made This Beat" because the reviewer highlights its ecstatic, joyous creation over swelling electro swells.
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The album's core strengths are its experimental, minimalist electronica and the poignant juxtaposition of grief and lingering joy.
Themes
Critic's Take
Backed by a small rootsy band, Alan Sparhawk turns grief into a daring electronic reinvention on White Roses, My God, where the best songs - notably “I Made This Beat” and “Can U Hear” - trade conventional melody for murky, visceral texture. Janne Oinonen’s ear hears an exciting mastery of new tools in the driving intensity of “I Made This Beat” and the claustrophobic, nocturnal rattle of “Can U Hear”, even as other moments feel sketchy or underrealised. The album’s almost gospel-tinged diversion, “Heaven”, briefly shines but sputters out, reinforcing that the record is a provocative, sometimes frustrating experiment rather than a tender, communicative triumph.
Key Points
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The best song, "I Made This Beat", is the record’s most immediate success thanks to its driving intensity and focused repetition.
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The album’s core strength is bold electronic experimentation that reshapes Sparhawk’s voice and pushes grief into radical, sometimes compelling textures.
Critic's Take
Eric Hill writes with measured clarity about Alan Sparhawk's solo turn, noting how Alan Sparhawk's White Roses, My God reframes mourning through electronic means. He highlights “I Made This Beat” as literal and clever, then traces emotional revelation into “Not the 1” and “Can U Hear”, where harmonies and processing find new purpose. The brief “Heaven” is singled out as chilling in its approximation of Mimi Parker's voice, shifting the record from glossy experiment to haunted intimacy. This is an album where grief and technology mingle, making the best tracks simultaneously fragile and unsettling.
Key Points
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The best song, "Heaven", is best because its chilling approximation of Mimi Parker's voice converts experiment into genuine mourning.
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The album's core strength is using electronic processing to dissolve identity and shape grief into manageable, haunting art.
Themes
Critic's Take
In this quietly unnerving solo turn, Alan Sparhawk's White Roses, My God finds its best songs in the intimate, repetitious meditations - notably “Feel Something” and “Station” - where sparse lyrics and pitched-up vocals compress longing into hooks. The album's standout moments come when Sparhawk pares things back: the drum-machine minimalism of “I Made This Beat” and the plaintive line in “Can U Hear” give the record its clearest emotional focus. Recorded with cheap gear and family contributions, these tracks make the album feel like a private reckoning that, paradoxically, yields some of the best songs on White Roses, My God.
Key Points
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The best song, notably “Feel Something,” uses repetition and sparse lyrics to concentrate emotional weight.
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The album’s core strengths are its intimate family context, experimentation with Auto-Tune and drum machines, and forward-minded embrace of contemporary sounds.