It’s been a bit of a sad month in the music world. Firstly, there was the death at 47 of Mark Linkous, the singer-songwriter behind Sparklehorse. Guardian journalist Tim Jonze described Linkous as “[taking] the cruel, the twisted, the ugly and [making] them beautiful”, which is a pretty good summation.
Linkous leaves behind an impressive back catalogue, including four studio albums - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, Good Morning Spider, It’s A Wonderful Life and Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain. A collaborative effort with Danger Mouse and a plethora of guest singers called Dark Night Of The Soul was curtailed for legal reasons, but may get an official release later this year.
Each Sparklehorse album has moments of brilliance, but my particular favourite is his third album, It’s A Wonderful Life, which has guest appearances from PJ Harvey, Tom Waits and Nina Persson from the Cardigans.
Linkous’s death was followed 11 days later by the death at 59 of Alex Chilton, the lead singer of the Box Tops (who had a 1967 top ten hit with ‘The Letter’) and the cult rockers Big Star. The latter group never had much commercial success in the 1970s but gained a critical renaissance following the band’s split, becoming particularly influential on future generations of alternative rock bands, including REM, the Replacements, Teenage Fanclub and Primal Scream, to name but a few.
For a sample of Messrs Linkous and Chilton’s brilliance, go here and here respectively.
Paul Bovey
