In June 1982 Robyn Hitchcock recorded this b-side “on a portastudio in a barn in Sussex…on a full moon.” In the notes on the original seven-inch sleeve he wrote:
Your stereo may need a new needle but the vocal sound is intentional. At the beginning of the song I play a wok (Chinese cooking utensil) 1/3 full of water, tipped through an angle of 40 degrees to vary the pitching. Using my left forearm to cradle it against my chest, I struck it repeatedly with a wooden spoon.
It’s no surprise that Mark Linkous was drawn not only to Hitchcock’s song but to his recording methods as well. What seems a little surprising is that he recorded this cover with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in 2009. Other than a couple of Daniel Johnson songs (“Hey Joe” on Good Morning Spider, “My Yoke Is Heavy” on the Distorted Ghost EP), Sparklehorse didn’t record many covers. It sounds like it was a blast to play though, and it’s nice to hear Linkous being a little silly and having fun.
Jeez, every one of these new Sparklehorse singles that gets released just breaks your heart all over again. This one features a harmony vocal by Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle.
The sea I wade
And tried to fade
Spat me aground
Got found undrowned
And so I stayed…
I wish Mark Linkous would’ve stayed around a little longer. It feels like such a gift that we’re able to hear these songs, but you still can’t help from wondering how complete he left them and what he’d think of us hearing these versions, obviously lovingly finished up for release by his brother Matt and the rest of the team assembled by his estate. Would Mark have tweaked these lyrics? Or rewritten them completely? We’ll never know. But they absolutely sound like him. And the songs sound perfect. So maybe we shouldn’t look a gift Sparklehorse in the mouth?
“From the very first seconds of ‘The Scull of Lucia’, I was transported to a different time,” says producer Joel Hamilton who mixed Bird Machine. “The recipe is unmistakably Sparklehorse: the pace, the sounds, the overall texture of the voice. Every sound seems to support the voice and the lyric, which was always at the core of Mark’s genius. The weight of the world, floated on a rickety raft, across a sea of melancholy.”
I’m so happy this is coming out. A new Sparklehorse album, the project Mark Linkous was working on before he took his own life in 2010. But posthumous releases are always a little tricky, right? How close is it to what the artist would’ve actually produced had they been alive to see it through to completion? You can never really know. The best you can hope for is that the people involved in the process have the appropriate respect for the vision of the artist.
An example of a great posthumous release is Elliott Smith’s New Moon, assembled lovingly by Smith’s friend and producer Larry Crane. But the songs on that collection were mostly finished, as Crane told us in 2007, requiring “just balancing the mix and adding very simple, light EQ or compression to some tracks.” And even so, there were some questionable decisions, such as including an early version of “Miss Misery” with its clunky, unfinished lyrics: “It’s a comedy from the seventies about nothing at all.” Would Smith have wanted us to hear that? Who knows?
From everything we know so far about Bird Machine, it appears as though this has taken more effort to complete, but the team putting it together, led by Linkous’ brother Matt who oversees his brother’s estate, is taking it seriously and treating the material with the amount of respect it deserves. In the album’s press release, Anti- Records claims, “A number of the songs were close to completion, while others needed only careful encouragement – the addition of subtle instrumentation and accompanying vocals in some cases, another careful mix in others – to take flight. […] Most of the record was already in place. Mark had given it its title and a track listing in handwritten notes received by Matt.”
The first single from the project, “It Will Never Stop” came out before Christmas and was recorded by Linkous at his Static King home studio with additional guitar added by co-producer Alan Weatherhead at Montrose Recording where Linkous’ 1968 Flickinger mixing console now resides.
This new single hails from the Fall 2009 sessions at Electrical Audio with Steve Albini. We’ve heard that “More than half a dozen songs were tracked by the end of the session, including nearly all of the instrumental parts. But Linkous was unable to finish his vocals because of a scratchy throat.” Band members said that “Linkous only recorded scratch vocals and didn’t finish his lyrics during the Albini session.” Albini said he had been “looking forward to seeing him again and finishing the record.”
It’s possible that Linkous continued working on those songs up until March 6, but even if he never got to properly finish it, “Evening Star Supercharger” still sounds like a Sparklehorse song.
Peace without pill, gun or needle or prayer appear
Never found sometimes near…
Matt Linkous says, “It’s the hardest decision I’ve ever made. It’s difficult making a choice about someone else’s art, even if you’ve known them all your life and worked with them, even if they were your brother and best friend. We had long conversations about not wanting to take this into a different direction. We wanted to bring out what was there.”
Well this is certainly an early Christmas present: a previously unreleased Sparklehorse song! It’s so great to hear Mark Linkous’ voice again. This is the first “new” song released since Linkous killed himself in 2010.
No information yet on when it was recorded, but we know where: Linkous’ own rehearsal space Static King and Montrose Recording in Richmond, Virginia. It features Richmond-based engineer Alan Weatherhead on guitar. Weatherhead recorded and played on “More Yellow Birds” from It’s A Wonderful Life (Capitol, 2001) and “Return To Me” from Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain (Capitol, 2006).
We should all be thankful that Capitol isn’t claiming this recording as its own, as major labels are wont to do (see: Elliott Smith), but it’s coming out on the indie that Linkous signed with near the end of his life: Anti-. Hopefully there’s a lot more in the vault.
I’m still hoping we will eventually get to hear some of the stuff that was recorded with Steve Albini at Electrical in Chicago in the fall of 2009. We know that “More than half a dozen songs were tracked by the end of the session, including nearly all of the instrumental parts. But Linkous was unable to finish his vocals because of a scratchy throat.”
The cover art is from a piece that Linkous painted by on his 1960s Ampeg Reverberocket 2 amplifier road case.
I just stumbled across this on the Sparklehorse site. It’s from a tribute CD to Johnny Cash from MOJO Magazine back in April 2006. Merle Travis wrote it, but Cash popularized it by featuring it on his live At Folsom Prison album.
So consider this a belated birthday celebration to the Man in Black. I’ve got some strong opinions about the release of American VI: Ain’t No Grave, but I’m keeping them to myself for now.
Despite the fact that you can stream the album in its entirety right now at NPR, it looks like Dark Night of the Soul, the collaboration between Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse, and David Lynch with vocals by James Mercer, Wayne Coyne, Gruff Rhys, Jason Lytle, Julian Casablancas, Frank Black, Iggy Pop, Nina Persson, Suzanne Vega, and Vic Chesnutt, is being scrapped due to a legal dispute with EMI.
Perhaps out of spite or maybe just acknowledging the fact that people who want to hear this music already know how to download it, Danger Mouse is releasing a blank CDR along with the 100-page book of David Lynch’s photos for $50.
This whole thing just seems preposterous. EMI couldn’t work out an arrangement to get this officially released? Or did Danger Mouse just forget to read the fine print on a contract? Either way, it’s a shame. The stream sounds really good: more Sparklehorse than Gnarls Barklay, if you know what I mean.
You can’t see everything, and with 130 bands over three days, you wouldn’t want to. I wasn’t very excited about this year’s lineup. In fact, there were less than 25 bands that I was even vaguely interested in, and that’s being liberal with my definition of “interested.” So there was no way that I could spend every waking hour for an entire weekend there. Not this year. Not for three whole days.
I devised a plan which I called “Hit it and quit it.” Get in, see some bands, and get out before I got bored or sunburned or too wasted. I ended up getting sunburned anyway. But I saw some great sets and had a few pleasant surprises, which is all you can really ask for.
Not really, of course. There’s a lot more you can ask for… like good sound and short beer lines, both of which were handled very professionally this year.
Chromewaves has dug up a little-known CDR by a Richmond band called Salt Chunk Mary. As Frank says, “It’s a collection of 8-track demos […] circa 1992/1993 which isn’t especially remarkable in and of itself save for the fact that it was fronted by one Mark Linkous, who would go on to create the singularly sad and beautiful Sparklehorse.”
He offers up three mp3s including an early version of “Someday I Will Treat You Good.” What a find!
