Sparklehorse
It's A Wonderful Life

(Capitol)

www.sparklehorse.com

Released late spring/early summer, 2001

Post-Millennial Folksongs from Outer Space (AKA the state of Virginia, USA)

Long ago and far away, I knew nothing about Mark Linkous and I listened to him anyway and shelved the first Sparklehorse album to collect dust, because I was incapable of "getting it" five years past. I later bought Good Morning Spider, which did not collect dust and took me on strange journeys inside my own head.

If any readers want to know about Linkous, they can go and look him up on the 'net and read about his physical mishaps. I haven't found anything recent about him, and this isn't a biographical piece, even if I find him one of the most fascinating musicians around.

Earlier in summer, I was presented with It's A Wonderful Life which has proven achingly beautiful and enduring. Unfortunately, it has sometimes proven a bit too eulogistic given recent catastrophic acts of political/religious violence, but that hasn't dulled the recording's diamond in the rough production techniques on some songs, nor the strange, otherworldly bubbling and squeaking underlying the almost lullaby-like quality of songs found elsewhere.

To be certain, defying its title, It's A Wonderful Life is depressing, sometimes almost unforgivingly so.

It is also strikingly and simply and starkly gorgeous, and downright weird. Like when Tom Waits shows up in an almost hip-hop meets dirge style tune called "Dog Door". There's no accounting sometimes. Anyplace else, it would seem incongruous. Here, it only adds chaos to this rich display of life.

Other high points are Polly Jean Harvey's turn on "Piano Fire", one of only two rock songs on the album (unless we count the aforementioned dirge), the backward silent movie film loop feel of "Babies On The Sun", and two songs in which Mark Linkous is exposed as an unerring, unapologetic and profound wordsmith, "Comfort Me", which appears to be about Virginia Woolfe for the first sentence, but may not be after that point.

However, it's the haunting and disturbing "Sea of Teeth", the fourth track, one of the "lullaby" tracks, mentioned previously, which paints what may possibly be one of the most graphic depictions of grief ever committed on a recording.

While I found the track bleak and beautiful prior to September 11th, two weeks later when I was finally able to bring myself back around to my CDs and my stereo, and turn off the incessant chatter of NPR, the song seemed to take on different meanings and musings about death and loss.

And so It's A Wonderful Life, Mark Linkous'/Sparklehorse's third full length recording proceeds like his previous work, to swing wildly hither and yon, through barren but almost sci-fi soundtrack-sounding songs about fat babies and yellow birds and babies on the sun, to rockers about getting sunburned waiting for the jets to land and being the king of nails, and finally, to explain sincerely and poetically how all the trees will turn to soil.

It's depressing, hopeful, hopeless and beautiful. And currently, perhaps, too relevant.

Highly recommended. Best album to date from this artist.

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