| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 27/04/2013 : 18:26:54
It's A Wonderful Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGZsQf6WjHI
Sparklehorse & Mark Linkous
...and his many varied and surreal dimensions
"Mark Linkous was one of the brightest lights of the alternative music scene before committing suicide in early 2010."
Sparklehorse was an American indie rock band led by the singer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Linkous.
Mark Linkous (September 9, 1962 – March 6, 2010) was an American singer, songwriter and musician, best known as leader of Sparklehorse. He was also known for his collaborations with such notable artists as Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Daniel Johnston, Radiohead, Black Francis, Julian Casablancas, Nina Persson, David Lynch, Danger Mouse, and Sage Francis.
A member of the 1980s indie band the Dancing Hoods, Linkous moved with the group from his native Virginia to New York City and later Los Angeles in hopes to achieve mainstream success. By 1988, the band had failed to land a major record label deal, and they disbanded with Linkous returning to Virginia, where he began writing songs under various monikers.
By 1995, he created a project named Sparklehorse, of which he would remain the only permanent member. The band released a quartet of critically acclaimed albums on Capitol Records: Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, Good Morning Spider, It's a Wonderful Life, and Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain. Linkous lived the last years of his life in Hayesville, North Carolina, where he established Static King Studio. He died by suicide in Knoxville, Tennessee on March 6, 2010.
.............................
Sparklehorse's first album, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot (1995), was a modest college radio success. In 1996, while touring Europe with Radiohead shortly after the album's release, Linkous consumed a combination of anti-depressants, valium, alcohol, and heroin in a London hotel room.[1] Unconscious and with his legs pinned beneath him for almost fourteen hours, the resulting potassium build up caused his heart to stop for several minutes after his body was lifted up. The ensuing surgery almost caused him to lose the use of both legs and left him wheelchair-bound for six months and requiring dialysis for acute kidney failure.
Good Morning Spider (1998) was recorded following this incident. Critics[who?] have conjectured that Linkous's brush with death inspired the sombre tone of the album, though Linkous stated that much of the material on GMS had already been written. One song which did result from it is "St. Mary", which is dedicated to the nurses at the eponymous hospital in Paddington where Linkous recuperated.
2001 saw the release of It's a Wonderful Life, featuring appearances by Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Bob Rupe, Nina Persson and Dave Fridmann. Whereas much of Vivadixie... and Spider were recorded solely by Linkous on his Virginia farm, the new album was a more collaborative work. Linkous expressed his satisfaction with the overall sound of It's a Wonderful Life, while also claiming that he would have preferred to include more experimental and instrumental material.
On September 25, 2006, Sparklehorse released their fourth album, Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, collaborating with Danger Mouse, Christian Fennesz, and Steven Drozd. This album featured the radio release "Don't Take My Sunshine Away" and a remastered version of "Shade And Honey", which Linkous originally wrote for Alessandro Nivola to sing in the 2003 movie Laurel Canyon, as well as a virtually unchanged re-release of "Morning Hollow," the bonus track from It's a Wonderful Life.
In 2008, Sparklehorse recorded a cover of the song "Jack's Obsession," from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas for the official compilation album Nightmare Revisited. In 2009, Sparklehorse teamed up with Danger Mouse and David Lynch in the project Dark Night of the Soul.
In 2009, Linkous teamed up with electronic ambient-music artist Christian Fennesz to create In the Fishtank 15, a wafting album EP of experimentation and dreamy atmospherics. The last four live shows, Linkous did together with Fennesz during a European tour that was held during October 2009.
Joe Tangari describes Linkous's songs as "defiantly surrealist...with all manner of references to smiling babies, organ music, birds, and celestial bodies. In fact, some of the lyrics are so surreal that it's hard to imagine they're even metaphors for anything." Many of these references are literary or from a variety of rock music sources.
Linkous committed suicide in Knoxville, Tennessee, on March 6, 2010.
Discography
Albums
* Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot (August 1995, UK No. 58)
* Good Morning Spider (October 1998, UK No. 30)
* It's a Wonderful Life (June 2001, UK No. 49)
* Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain (September 25, 2006, US Heatseekers No. 11, UK No. 60)[6]
* Dark Night of the Soul (with Danger Mouse) (2009, UK No. 32)
Documentary trailer-The Sad And beautiful World Of Sparklehorse
It's A Wonderful Life--full album play
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQlUyAWwe4w
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-sad-beautiful-world-of-sparklehorse
________________________________________________
Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
| 4 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| stewart |
Posted - 21/06/2013 : 20:03:21
lucky to have seen him a couple of times in a small venue in Manchester - the first time he was in a wheelchair and Sparklehorse were supporting Mazzy Star, what a line-up! here's a review of another gig on that tour http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/sparklehorse--mazzy-star-1351250.html |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 21/06/2013 : 13:25:47
Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionpilot
Full album play...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTlA9JPve74
1. Homecoming Queen
2. Weird Sisters
3. 850 Double Pumper Holley
4. Rainmaker
5. Spirit Ditch
6. Tears On Fresh Fruit
7. Saturday
8. Cow
9. Little Bastard Choo Choo
10. Hammering The Cramps
11. Most Beautiful Widow In Town
12. Heart Of Darkness
13. Ballad Of A Cold Lost Marble
14. Someday I Will Treat You Good
15. Sad And Beautiful World
16. Gasoline Horseys
Introduction: Sparklehorse was Mark Linkous. Other musicians appeared on Sparklehorse albums, occasionally even contributed to the songwriting, but the band was Linkous’s project, just as, say, The Mountain Goats moniker represents the work of John Darnielle. In this kind of a setup, collaborators come and go, but the constant remains a sole musician, an arrangement no different than that of artists who release recordings under their own names; Sparklehorse albums could be “Mark Linkous” albums. That said, later in his career, Linkous participated in some projects that were explicit collaborations with other musicians where he was not the sole driving creative force, namely, an In the Fishtank session with Fennesz and Dark Night of the Soul with Danger Mouse and numerous guest vocalists. I’ll be covering both of these as part of the Sparklehorse discography, but I’ll be skipping the two albums released by The Dancing Hoods – the band Linkous was a member of in the 1980s — however, as both of their albums are out-of-print. While anyone capable of some Google searching should be able to track down The Dancing Hoods discography, their style is of a somewhat different ilk than Sparklehorse (more straightforward, Replacements-style rock) and the latter seems to be where Linkous’s talents really flourished.
Sadly, Linkous took his own life in March of this year. With this discography, I’m hoping to both better familiarize myself with his work and hopefully turn on a few more people to his music.
-criticalmassesmedia
http://criticalmassesmedia.com/2010/09/the-gross-yields-sparklehorse-1-vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot-chords-ive-known-ep/
________________________________________________
Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 14/06/2013 : 17:53:58
Of course there are many more dimensions to Linkous, strange and surreal...including a cover here of a Tom Waits song--Ol' Tom appears too
DOG DOOR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahx5ws90jiU
From the album 'It's a Wonderful Life'. Video directed by the Quay Brothers for Sundance's 'Sonic Cinema'. Produced and mixed by Mark Linkous at Tarbox Road Studios, NY. Recorded at Static King, VA and Joe Hoffman Studio, CA. Lyrics by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. Mark plays drums, guitar, optigan, backwards midget voice, and sampler. Adrian Utley plays kitty cat guitar and fuzzy ending bass. Tom Waits sings and plays big seed pod, metal things, and train.
The next track moves into the beautiful & sombre
More Yellow Birds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dcuCXrGruw
________________________________________________
Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 14/06/2013 : 15:01:32
If you've started to listen to Mark Linkous' SPARKLEHORSE - It's A Wonderful Life (full album play provided above), you'll see why I find it hard not to draw parallels to Nick Drake, sonically and through both their lives' sad endings.
Both artists provided music that was at times, both uplifting and melancholic. From which I can't help quoting a favorite Tim Buckley album....happy sad. But in all ways, revelatory.
Great music to discover and explore.
________________________________________________
Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
|
|
