Written by Mark Linkous. Produced by Matt Linkous, Melissa Moore Linkous, and Alan Weatherhead. Recorded & engineered by Steve Albini. Mixed by Joel Hamilton at Studio G, Brooklyn, mastered by Greg Calbi & Steve Fallone at Sterling Sound NJ.
When Sparklehorse released Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot in 1995, it felt like an outlier. At the time, during the height of Britpop, there weren’t many artists making slow-motion, country-influenced, lo-fi rock music like Mark Linkous. His aesthetic brought together a classic pop sensibility with a junkshop approach to instrumentation and timbre, where a song like “Chaos of the Galaxy / Happy Man” from second album Good Morning Spider literally sounded like tuning into a radio transmission. He collaborated with PJ Harvey and Tom Waits on It’s a Wonderful Life, and on the title track of fourth album Slept For Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, he painfully evoked the syrup-thick sensation of depression. Though Linkous was candid about his mental-health struggles, when he took his own life in March 2010, it was still a shocking and tragic loss.
Bird Machine is technically the fifth Sparklehorse record, and was worked on by Linkous in the months leading up to his death. This posthumous release has been lovingly put together by Linkous’s brother, Matt, and his sister-in-law, Melissa — and they’ve done a fantastic job. It sounds just as a Sparklehorse album should, and is a surprisingly upbeat listening experience given it was recorded during Linkous’s final months. Among the 14 songs are some searingly fuzzy numbers, such as opener “It Will Never Stop,” “I Fucked It Up,” and “Listening to the Higsons,” a Robyn Hitchcock cover. There’s the sparklingly Beatles-esque “Daddy’s Gone,” the bright, Mellotron-laced “Evening Star Supercharger,” and “The Scull of Lucia” is reminiscent of Radiohead’s “No Surprises,” with a naïve, music-box feel to its melodies.
It’s in Bird Machine’s heavier moments, though, where the album really hits home — and the loss of a unique artist is most keenly felt. The harrowing “O Child” is so slow and sparse that it feels like it could fall apart at any moment, and the lengthy instrumental outro includes fractured, static-flecked dictaphone recordings. On “Everybody’s Gone to Sleep,” Linkous taps into a mellow Yo La Tengo vibe, his vocal sounding uncannily like Ira Kaplan. After the brief guitar instrumental “Blue,” “Stay” is a heartbreaking piano-driven closer, reassuring a loved one “It’s gonna get brighter,” yet sounding as if Linkous is already heading towards the light. And on standout “Kind Ghosts,” which belongs among Sparklehorse’s finest songs, the lyrics are all the more bittersweet given the context: “Where were you, my kind ghosts, when I needed you?” Let’s hope they were waiting for him on the other side.
Though one can certainly always appreciate a tasteful resurrection of Linkous, this archival collection doesn’t get things quite right. His pretty, celestial side is understood but the rest isn’t messy or restless enough; instead offered is a series of rather conventionally-structured, curiously polished and largely tame tunes. Still, it makes me miss him.
