Sparklehorse – Bird Machine – UNCUT

The idea of the multiverse has change into considered one of science fiction’s hardiest tropes. Like time journey, it faucets into the alluring fantasy that our lives might have turned out a special manner, that perhaps we’ve all acquired a shot at swapping out the sadder, tougher components of our actuality. And given the unhappy and laborious circumstances that surrounded Sparklehorse’s fifth album, it’s tempting to think about how these songs may exist in a barely completely different dimension, one through which Mark Linkous continues to be round to bash out “I Fucked It Up” on some competition stage or apply a extra delicate method to the extra cosmic likes of “All people’s Gone To Sleep”. Alas, that’s not the spot within the multiverse we occupy. As a substitute, the 14 raucous, melancholy, acerbic and stylish songs of Hen Machine – now accomplished by a group led by Matt Linkous, Mark’s youthful brother and longtime collaborator – arrive cloaked in tragedy and inevitably accompanied by questions on what shapes and trajectories they may have taken had Linkous lived to usher them into the world himself.

When the Sparklehorse singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on March 6, 2010 in Knoxville, Tennessee, he left his ultimate work incomplete. Precisely how unfinished has lengthy been a matter of hypothesis, with many followers presuming that it could by no means see the sunshine of day. Certainly, given how a lot Linkous’s productiveness had declined in his later years, it was truthful to imagine that solely scraps existed. In spite of everything, his struggles with despair and dependancy contributed to a prolonged artistic blockage earlier than he enlisted producer Brian “Hazard Mouse” Burton to assist assemble 2006’s Dreamt For Mild Years In The Stomach Of A Mountain, a lot of which consisted of songs initially left off It’s A Great Life 5 years earlier. His subsequent collaboration with Burton – 2010’s Darkish Night time Of The Soul, whose launch was delayed till after Linkous’s passing on account of a authorized dispute with EMI – was so crowded with high-profile collaborators, it was generally laborious to discern Linkous’s hand in its creation.

But this restoration job – which Matt Linkous says adheres to his brother’s in depth plans for the album, embody the monitor sequencing – demonstrates no diminishment of confidence. As a substitute, every thing about Hen Machine strongly suggests he remained the identical restlessly creative artist that he’d been when he referred to as time on his band Dancing Hoods, left Los Angeles and holed up in a house studio in Richmond, Virginia to make the scratchy, scrappy music that turned Sparklehorse’s 1995 debut, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot. Lots of the songs right here bristle with an vitality that feels very a lot in keeping with Matt’s account of the passion his brother expressed concerning the work in progress, which he envisioned as a “straight-up pop report”. After all, the larger and generally burlier full-band performances Linkous captured in late 2009 at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago had been adopted by the stranger, generally extra desolate pathways he pursued whereas working by himself in North Carolina at Static King, his longtime dwelling studio (he had simply relocated it to Knoxville on the time of his demise). All through all of it, Linkous was striving for a steadiness of the numerous opposites that had at all times animated his music: gentle and darkish, easy and ornate, fastidiously managed and gleefully anarchic.

Linkous was even making good on one other ambition he expressed to his brother, which was to take some inspiration from Buddy Holly. True, “It Will By no means Cease” might solely have entered the Crickets’ repertoire in one other of these alternate dimensions however it nonetheless opens Hen Machine with a lovely burst of melody, fuzz and rumble. The music additionally indicators a shift away from the extra tightly constructed and generally constrictive nature of the Hazard Mouse albums towards the extra spontaneous really feel of 1998’s Good Morning Spider. That mentioned, Linkous’s scuffed-up voice all through the album could also be much less of a throwback to how he sounded on Sparklehorse’s earlier albums than a matter of logistical necessity, Linkous having recorded solely tough vocals at greatest.

Linkous might have later determined to current his vocals fairly in a different way – as per the numerous methods he may’ve in the end deviated from his plans – however what survives right here nonetheless works for the fabric, his voice constantly evincing each fragility and a fervent resilience. Although steeped in an ethereal environment, “Variety Ghosts” involves feels extra grounded because the gently strummed guitar and multi-tracked vocal harmonies emerge from the murk. “Night Star Supercharger” is even prettier as a gentle-hearted train in psych-country, with Linkous gently expressing his eager for “peace with out tablet, gun or needle”. The lyrics additionally see him discover the metaphor of how a dying star expands earlier than it’s gone, although the richness of the association and fullness of the instrumentation imply the music doesn’t really feel as lonesome or prophetic because it may need. Against this, “Oh Little one” feels rather more just like the product of profound isolation. “I do know it may be unhealthy/Oh little one, generally you’ll be unhappy”, he sings over what appears like a battered barroom piano, the air of desolation solely deepening when the music incorporates a recording of comfortable chatter from his nephew Spencer.

Although they had been hardly uncommon in Linkous’s writing, the themes of despair and mortality he explores all through Hen Machine inevitably tackle a selected poignance. He returns to a panorama stuffed with ghosts in “Falling Down”, a mid-tempo, country-tinged magnificence that wouldn’t appear misplaced on Neil Younger’s Harvest Moon. Within the hazily beautiful “Hi there Lord” he assumes the attitude of one other potential phantom, this time a soldier who questions the large man upstairs why it’s his lot to struggle and die. However Linkous’s caustic sense of humour comes via sharply on Hen Machine, too. The punchiest Sparklehorse music since “Pig”, “I Fucked It Up” is a garage-rock rager through which he makes gentle of his personal failures. There’s a equally cavalier spirit to “Chaos Of The Universe” – a sketchier cousin to Good Morning Spider’s “Chaos Of The Galaxy/Blissful Man” – and his cowl of Robyn Hitchcock’s “Listening To The Higsons”. The latter is considered one of a number of songs that he might have rightly consigned to B-side standing, however it’s enjoyably ragged all the identical.

There’s additionally one thing exhilarating concerning the grace and sweetness he achieves elsewhere, particularly given this artist’s tendency to slash his prettiest canvases (and once more, he may very properly have completed the identical if he had the possibility). Two full-band tracks that embody backing vocals by Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, “All people’s Gone To Sleep” and “The Scull Of Lucia”, evoke The Band at their sweetest and stateliest. On the similar time, they’re a reminder of how idiosyncratic Linkous’s songs might be, with the presence of a budget synths and toy devices that so typically offered his songs with their off-kilter model of appeal.

The wobbly, warbling sound of the Casio SK-1 – considered one of Linkous’s most beloved items of drugs, later bequeathed to The Flaming Lips’ Steven Drozd – is unmistakable in Hen Machine’s nearer, “Keep”. Whereas it’s nonetheless heartbreaking to listen to Linkous promise that “it’s gonna get brighter” with the data of what was to return, there’s extra daylight inside Hen Machine than anybody may’ve anticipated. And as a lot as these songs could also be steeped within the ache of their creator’s life, one of the best music right here occupies a particular place and time, a metaphysical coordinate past that unhappy, laborious actuality we all know too properly.