Bird Machine, the new posthumous Sparklehorse album, is out on September 8th

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxpyd1VH7rM

for some background: mark linkous, aka sparklehorse, died by suicide in knoxville on march 6th 2010 at the age of 47. at the time, he was apparently almost done recording an album with steve albini, which was to be his fifth (6th really, if you include Dark Night of the Soul which was a big collaboration with David Lynch, Black Francis and others).

apparently his brother matt and sister-in-law melissa have decided to release the album, trying to arrange the tracks as close to mark's original vision as they could. the video above is my favourite of the singles that have been released.

sparklehorse is my all-time fave and i'm pretty excited but also kind of worried. we've known these songs existed for a really long time but almost none of them existed in any form on the internet. having heard the singles, one of which is a cover of "listening to the higsons" by the frontman of the soft boys, it feels like matt and melissa played it safe and mixed the stuff very similarly to how mark's earlier stuff sounded. "it will never stop" is very much like "cruel sun", "scull of lucia" is very much like "sunshine". that was probably a wise choice, and apparently most of the mixing was already done anyway, so i'd guess their attempts aren't too far off from how it would have sounded if mark was still around

i don't think his songwriting was as strong on his last couple albums as it was on the first three, but it'll be nice to finally hear some new stuff by him. i've read that he was pretty critical of the lyrics on his last album (DFLYITBOAM) and i feel like he tried harder on this album, which is cool.

anyone else got any thoughts on the singles? how do you think the album will shape up next to the classics?

wish hospital radio were still around to see this

sorry had to.

anyway, i am realizing that while i love his first few albums, i never listened to the later stuff. also didn’t realize they’ve been releasing singles since they made the album announce a few months back. exciting!

wish hospital radio were still around to see this

― ludicrously capacious bag (voodoo chili), Wednesday, 16 August 2023 13:00 (three minutes ago)

i'm sure he's still around... lurkin

when you say "first few albums" do you mean the unbelievable hat trick that is vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, good morning Spider and it's a wonderful life?

there's maybe like... 2 bad songs in the whole trio as far as i've concerned, and even that's just compared to the high points. good morning spider is easily my favourite nineties record

there's maybe half an album's worth of good stuff he only released in lesser-known EPs - love the guitar tones in this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFgAYDl4z4k

after that i think there was kind of a steep drop in quality - the next one, dreamt for light years in the belly of a mountain, only had 3 songs on it i liked and one of those (morning hollow) was a secret track on it's a wonderful life. here's one of the others - this album had a kind of digital quality on a few songs that's absent on his earlier stuff, and it's hit or miss, but this one's a hit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBJlyQvbeoI

First three are totally classic.

I'm a huge David Lynch fan, but Dark Night of the Soul was disappointing. A couple of good songs, but it felt like a scattered mess. Dreamt For Light Years was rote, he was repeating himself.

I'll get the new one because I want to give it a fair shake, but from the couple of songs I've heard it's... fine. Sparklehorse isn't a lyrics band for me, it's how the words and the sounds fit together. It's a Wonderful Life was great but maybe that was when he defined his sound and he got stuck. I didn't know Albini was involved, it'll be interesting to see if that changes anything, but I fully expect it to sound like late period Sparklehorse.

At this point I'd be more excited for a collection of ep/b-side tracks.

you've basically summed up my thoughts perfectly - i love his lyrics, but it might actually be more to do with "how the words and the sounds fit together" as he's certainly not the world's greatest wordsmith. he does have some great lines though. always loved "he got dragged by a donkey/through the switches and the myrtle/but he was once a little fat baby". a shiver runs through me just typing it

fully agree about dark night of the soul. it's all over the place thematically and production wise and there's something ugly about it that's hard to describe. just not fun to listen to with the exception of a couple of tracks.

sadly i doubt we've got any more hidden stuff in the vault, at least not that they'll release. i'd guess the main justification they've allowed themselves for finally releasing this is that the songs were mostly finished - i doubt we'll ever see a New Moon style compilation of hidden gems

but hey, if there's one winner on the album apart from the singles i'll go to sleep happy on the 8th

yes i meant the first three, and especially good morning spider which has several songs that just smack me directly in the gut (“cruel sun,” “maria's little elbows,” “hundreds of sparrows”)

In the Fishtank 15 rules

hundreds of sparrows is actually the only song on the album i don't 100% love! i love 95 percent of it but i'm not into the tone of the piano at the very start. change that and it's golden.

other killers on that album: pig, saint mary, all night home and come on in. and junebug is the perfect ending

xpost i forgot about in the fishtank! it's not hooky enough for my tastes but i really like "goodnight sweetheart"

I'm hopeful, very pleasantly surprised that there was more music.

I think Albini's greatest work as a producer is Nina Nastasia's catalog. I could see a Sparklehorse record presented in that style of production being interesting.

hundreds of sparrows is actually the only song on the album i don't 100% love! i love 95 percent of it but i'm not into the tone of the piano at the very start. change that and it's golden.

the piano sounds pretty normal, are you talking about the celesta/bell that rings throughout?

nah, i'm pretty sure it's a piano - not the thing that sounds like a wurlitzer and not the bell (i love both of those)

it's impossible for me to explain what i don't like about the piano sound but it's always bugged me. it sounds somehow artificial and not in a good way. it's a tiny gripe though, there's some really wonderful moments in that song - iiiiiiiii'm sooooooo sorry, my spirit's rarely in my body.... it wonders through the dry country.......

wanders* lol

i was a huge fan and mainlined the first three albums back at the time. i was disappointed with Dreamt for Light Years not so much for the songwriting but the fact that about half of it was previously released Wonderful Life-era b-sides and bonus tracks. i know Linkous was in a bad place at the time but it was still a letdown. never gave Dark Night more than a couple listens, and after his death ive barely pulled out any of the albums. partly due to it being a bummer and partly just one of those things where i had a v intense relationship with those records for ~10 years and burned out/grew older/moved on.

that being said i'm looking forward to the new one - its been long enough that i'm having fun revisiting that sound, and even if it sounds like it wont break new ground the new singles sound like good versions of things he's done before (as others have pointed out), and i'm fine with that at this stage. the fact that it was already mostly mixed & completed helps too. its ironic that his posthumous album seems like it will feel less vault-scrapey than the last 'official' album

it's out! just listened to it through. interested to hear other people's thoughts

Will check it out! What are your initial thoughts?

to be honest it's a little heartbreaking. i really want to like it for what it is - an unexpected album of mostly unreleased songs by my favourite artist - but i just don't. the three songs i quite like - "it will never stop", "the scull of lucia" and "hello lord" - still feel mostly like a rehash of ideas from his other albums, and two of them were released as singles!

the album reminds me a lot of it's a wonderful life, but largely lacks the energy, lushness and inventiveness that makes that album so beautiful.

i also found the experience kind of marred by the knowledge that some of the ideas didn't come from, or weren't approved by, mark himself - i think i'd rather hear the unfinished songs, as they were when he died, rather than fully-formed tracks that are an unspecified patchwork of his work and the work that came afterwards. i do get that the decision to finish the songs was made by the people who knew mark best, and maybe it's what he would have wanted, but something about it just doesn't sit right with me. i guess something i've always loved about sparklehorse is how much the music feels like the expression of mark linkous' singular vision, and it's weird seeing his work taken out of his hands and tinkered with.

very curious to hear what you lot think though.

i guess i like this instrumental too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4leIBJBS4mk

listening through again and nah, i was way too harsh. "o child" and "everybody's gone to sleep" are gorgeous, "it will never stop" rocks and "the scull of lucia" might even compete with some of his best lullabies. almost every song on the album has parts i really like.

it's not as cohesive or as ridiculously gorgeous as his first 3 albums, but then again, nothing is. i'm grateful for this album. god i miss him

this is fantastic :( i miss him

i wish i'd have got the chance to see him live. he was so good

bad idea right was the best track imo

Finally getting around to this and think its a really fantastic Sparklehorse album, plenty of tunes that are as good as his best imo. Certainly it breaks no new ground and relies on all of his familiar moves but, well, he was a master of those moves by that time. I dont know how much of it was assembled/completed posthumously, but its a very credible job to my ears, if you told me this was fully completed and mastered at the time of his death I'd believe you. After a long time away from this music its a real treat to sit down and hear a really good, top-of-his-game album of all-new Sparklehorse material. Bittersweet obviously, but bringing this out was unquestionably the right decision imo.