Music had always been a shared language between Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous and his younger brother Matt, and as Mark began work on what he planned to be the fifth Sparklehorse album in 2009, the two of them would talk through his plans for the record. Matt can clearly recall their conversations; Mark’s excitement about the influences feeding into it and the way the songs were starting to take shape. It was these conversations that Matt and Melissa – Mark’s sister-in-law, who had both worked with Sparklehorse – returned to years later as they began to sift through boxes of tapes to catalogue and preserve Mark’s unreleased recordings and bring his posthumous album, entitled ‘Bird Machine’, to life.
‘Bird Machine’ will be released on September 8, and in celebration of today’s announce the song “Evening Star Supercharger” has been released. Featuring art and handwritten lyrics by Mark, watch and listen to the track below.
Over the course of four beautiful and otherworldly Sparklehorse records and two Sparklehorse collaborative projects, Mark had built a reputation as one of alternative rock’s most distinctive and influential songwriters. His combination of ghostly static-scarred ballads and thrillingly distorted rock was revered by fellow musicians such as Thom Yorke, PJ Harvey and Tom Waits, all of whom he recorded with, and deeply cherished by his fans. But the intimacy and honesty that made his songs so special also laid bare the troubles that he carried. As he continued to work on his fifth album, recording with Steve
Albini in Chicago, and in front of his beloved 1968 Flickinger mixing console at his Static King studio, the depression which had shadowed him for many years began to deepen. On March 6 of 2010 he died by suicide at the age of 48. Several years later when Matt, Melissa and Bryan Hoffa, an audio preservation specialist at the Library of Congress’ National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, began the painstaking process of listening to and archiving Mark’s recordings, they found the ideas that Mark had discussed with Matt had been vividly and powerfully achieved. 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. “It was as though the songs let you know,” says Melissa. “Mark communicated these songs. We just did our best to transmit them.”
Mark was famously perfectionist about his work and the question of whether to complete the album weighed heavily on Matt. “It’s the hardest decision I’ve ever made,” says Matt. “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.” It helped hugely that Matt and Melissa were able to work with a team of musicians – including Alan Weatherhead, who produced ‘Bird Machine’ with Matt and Melissa, Joel Hamilton who mixed the record, and Greg Calbi, who jointly mastered the final version – who had worked with Sparklehorse and cared deeply for Mark. And crucially, it felt clear to them that most of the record was already in place. Mark had given it its title and a track listing in handwritten notes received by Matt.
From the time that Mark began working on these songs to the record’s imminent release, 14 years have passed, a long time for a collection of tracks that were already well advanced at the time of Mark’s death. But there’s something too in the album’s long and complex gestation – the chaos of old tapes, the love and care that Mark’s family and his close musician friends have shown to every detail – that makes this so distinctively a Sparklehorse record.
It means so much to me, this last batch of beautiful stuff that my brother was putting together,” says Matt. “When I sit down and put on a pair of headphones, I’ll run it all the way through. Everything from “It Will Never Stop” to “Evening Star Supercharger” to “Stay,” that’s Mark just letting it out.”
Pre-Order ‘Bird Machine’
1. It Will Never Stop 2. Kind Ghosts 3. Evening Star Supercharger 4. O Child 5.Falling Down 6. I Fucked It Up 7. Hello Lord 8. Daddy’s Gone 9. Chaos of the Universe 10. Listening to the Higsons 11. Everybody’s Gone to Sleep 12. Scull of Lucia 13. Blue 14. Stay
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