Photo: Danny Clinch
By the time Sparklehorse played the 1999 Big Day Out in Auckland, they had already accrued a degree of mythology. Their debut record Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot is one I can name from memory thanks to its singles getting high rotation on Max TV.
The year after its release the man behind the project, Mark Linkous, collapsed in his hotel room while on tour with Radiohead. He’d ODed on a mix of substances, and after lying unconscious with his legs pinned under him for fourteen hours, his heart stopped for several minutes. He regained use of his legs after being confined to a wheelchair for six months.
A second album followed, and by the time Linkous and band played New Zealand, myself and many others were devotees of his remarkable songwriting.
After Sparklehorse’s performance to a modest but fervent crowd, (many of whom were just happy to see Linkous alive and well), I was wandering the craft area, and spotted him sitting alone in the narrow gap between two tents, drinking from a bottle of red wine.
My friends prodded me to go talk to him, but I sensed I might regret it. I was nineteen. Linkous would die by suicide around ten years later, after releasing a further three albums.
It came as a surprise to learn of a new, posthumously-completed Sparklehorse album in 2023, and despite my initial reservations about this kind of project, it emerges as an uncompromised addition to an incredible body of work.
Near the end of the 2000s, Linkous began recording with Steve Albini, an engineer better than perhaps anyone at doing the basics well. And that was the aim with this album: Linkous intentionally simplified his writing, referencing bands like The Kinks. He wanted to refresh his process.
In 2017 his younger brother Matt heard the Bird Machine recordings for the first time, and along with his wife Melissa Moore, began pondering the right thing to do. The two had offered feedback to Mark during his career when he played them formative tracks, and feeling these songs were close to finished, they decided to complete them.
It can’t have been an easy decision, and they’ve been admirably transparent in interviews, saying they approached many of Mark’s former collaborators to round out the album. I’m particularly grateful for the thorough liner notes, which state exactly who is doing what.
The result doesn’t feel like a collection of demos, or something sullied; it feels like a complete Sparklehorse album. Listening to it I felt a mix of relief, sadness, and gratitude at receiving one final dispatch from an important artist.
Sparklehorse was never a household name, but Linkous’ influence is still heard in plenty of new music; particularly in the realm of bedroom pop.
His reach can be seen in the guest list for the album he made with Danger Mouse, Dark Night of the Soul: David Lynch, Black Francis from The Pixies, Suzanne Vega, Iggy Pop, Nina Persson from The Cardigans and more put in appearances. He was by all accounts an inspiring person to be around.
No one mixed delicacy with blown out sonics better, a mix he refined on each album, using tape machines, vintage keyboards, and an array of cheap microphones, which retained the intimacy of his voice, but made him sound almost inhuman.
Part of the Linkous magic is including a track like ‘It Will Never Stop’, which revels in a certain skuzziness, alongside one like ‘The Scull of Lucia’, precariously gentle and lovely.
Bird Machine is rounded out with a few guest vocalists - Jason Lytle from Grandaddy, Melissa Moore-Linkous, and Matt and Moore’s teenage son, Spencer Linkous. Learning about these personal, familial connections make the experience of listening even more bittersweet, but that word has always applied to Sparklehorse.
In the song ‘Kind Ghosts’, it stings hearing the lyric “Where were you, my kind ghosts, when I needed you”. But it’s also worth bearing in mind the man described by Mark Linkous’s friends, family, and collaborators: someone who always treated them warmly, and contained so much creativity that it’s still resonating to this day.
