Retribution Gospel Choir. Photo by Chelsea Morgan.When I interviewed Alan Sparhawk in 2007, the singer/songwriter/guitarist touched on the idea of a "golden moment ... when you're sort of just struggling with some instrument and you sort of have just figured it out, and you are just figuring out the first possible ideas and melodies on it; it's really exciting."

He was talking specifically about Low's Drums & Guns, in which the Minnesota trio (featuring Sparhawk, his wife Mimi Parker on drums, and bassist Matt Livingston - who has since left the band) experimented with instruments they weren't comfortable playing.

In an interview last week promoting Retribution Gospel Choir's December 31 performance at RIBCO (supporting the Meat Puppets), that concept re-emerged in slightly different form. He cast it as freedom - but it's critical to understand that it isn't a natural state of being but the result of work and getting rid of ego. "Those are everything," he said. "'There was a moment where I was not in the way.'"