Sparklehorse – Bird Machine – Album Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

Album Review: Sparklehorse - Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain

A descending guitar line opens Sparklehorse's 2006 album. Don't Take My Sunshine Away has all the hallmarks of Mark Linkous' most accessible songs, till he adds a heapload of static and noise halfway through. Noisy moments abound, with Ghost In The Sky and It's Not So Hard dominated by static. Other tracks, like Getting It Wrong have a more electronic feel than usual.

There are pop moments, Shade and Honey could almost be Eel's, while the catchily downbeat Some Sweet Day uses piano sparingly. The acoustic picking of Return To Me is a rare stripped-down moment. But the title track, occupying the final ten and a half minutes, is a complete departure.

What appears to be an aimlessly drifting instrumental, consisting of piano and all manner of electronics, is a shimmering, addictive piece. The music is blissfully mournful and damaged, with faraway pedal steel guitar whines. It's almost like Neil Young's Cortez the Killer on tranquillisers, floating in space, and is as 'out there' as Linkous has ever got.

Album Review: Sparklehorse – It’s A Wonderful Life

Sparklehorse’s third album, released in 2001 has a more homogenous feel than previous albums, with fewer of the sudden, jarring noisier tracks.  In fact there is only one track that jars, and it arrives late into the album.  Dog Door features of all people Tom Waits on guest vocals.  The combination of Mark Linkous and Waits should work, on paper anyhow.  In reality it just doesn’t work, coming across as mere pastiche, Waits using an affected falsetto (yes, really) on the track.

But the rest of the album works very well indeed.  The title track sets the tone with Linkous’ creepy, whispered vocals, distant bells and scratchy, muffled instrumentation.  Again this track is a little atypical as the rest of the album is more lush.  Tracks such as Gold Day (which has a ring of Eels about it), the Van Morrison-esque Sea of Teeth, and More Yellow Birds are wonderfully drowsy drift to them.  Darker fare such as Apple Bed (featuring a highly effective backing vocal from Nina Persson of the Cardigans) and piano ballad Eyepennies (featuring PJ Harvey) works equally well.

It’s not all sleepiness, Piano Fire is more uptempo while King of Nails stomps and struts, full of confidence.  Penultimate track Comfort Me returns the album to a ‘normal’, countrified keel.  A wonderful life, indeed.

Album Review: Sparklehorse – Good Morning Spider

Mark Linkous’ follow up to the curiously named Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot is a more difficult beast than its predecessor to get into.  Again it’s a multilayered album, but the layers are denser than before.

It’s a tricky listen because the slower songs lull you into a relaxed state but then you are jarred by a burst of noise on the following track each time.  It opens with the fairly heavy Pig before settling into a hazy, drifting mood with Painbirds and the gentle guitar pickings of Saint Mary.  The mood becomes murkier with the brief instrumental drone of the title track before the strident, upbeat rock song Sick of Goodbyes.

Sunshine is a gorgeous melody which is dragged out a little over 5 minutes which should work better but unfortunately it doesn’t quite succeed.  Chaos of the Galaxy/Happy Man should be a driving rock song but it the opening 2 minutes of the song is muffled, buried under layers of static and studio trickery.

After a nice cover of Daniel Johnston’s Hey Joe, Linkous darkens the mood with the gloomy, almost Cure-like melody of Come On In.  An example of the fine musicianship on this album is Maria’s Little Elbows, which has a gorgeous guitar led descending melody and a nice Velvet Underground referencing lyric: (“she says I’ve really come to hate my body”).

But it’s almost as if too much mellowness is hard for Mark Linkous to take.  Pounding melodic rocker Cruel Sun obliterates the mood, though the effect cleanses the palette nicely for the dreamy, drowsy All Night Home.

Despite the fact that the songs on this album are far less immediate than its predecessor, they resonate for longer, making it arguably a more rewarding listen.

Album Review: Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot

Sparklehorse’s bewilderingly titled debut album is a real slow-burner.  Released in 1995, it introduces the late Mark Linkous’ weedy Neil Young style-croon.  The album varies between delicate, downbeat ballads (Homecoming Queen, Most Beautiful Widow In Town), midtempo Americana (Weird Sisters, Saturday, Heart of Darkness), anthemic rockers (Rainmaker, Hammering the Cramps, Someday I Will Treat You Good) and noise-outs (Tears On Fresh Fruit).

Weird Sisters has an addictive melody, while Spirit Ditch has a beautiful, damaged feel to it as Linkous croaks lines like “I want my records back” and “woke up in a burned out basement” over an achingly pretty guitar part.  The mood is smashed to bits by the abrasive guitars of next track Tears On Fresh Fruit.

There are a couple of slightly annoying, noisy short interludes (850 Double Pumper Holley, Little Bastard Choo Choo, Ballad of a Cold Lost Marble) which disrupt the flow and seem a little pointless.  Better are the lengthy Cow features a nice banjo and accordion which evolves into an pleasant, electric workout, and later penultimate track Sad & Beautiful World aims and succeeds at capturing the effect Primal Scream were aiming for with the ballads on Give Out But Don't Give Up.

It’s hard to explain the charm of this album, it just really… works.