Graded on a Curve: Sparklehorse, Vivadixiesubmarine-
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Some artists are like ghosts; even in front of you they are not there, and they flit away when you try to capture their essence, forever elusive, elusive to the end. Doomed, damned, accursed, fucked by brain chemistry; it makes no difference how you explain them, they are not long for this world. Such was the case with Elliott Smith and also with the brilliant Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, who put out five LPs before killing himself in 2010 for the usual reason—he found the pain of living too heavy a burden to bear, and finally let that burden drop.

I say ghost, and when I say it I am talking as well about his music, which is as uncanny and lovely as the spectre of a long-dead Civil War bride. Working with imagery of the natural world, his is a music full of bees, horses’ heads, and cows, all of them transfigured via a kind of homespun mysticism that gives every line he sings an occult meaning, indecipherable to the living and dead alike.

A heavy sense of sadness weighs his songs; if it weren’t for that weight, I doubt we’d be able to hear them at all. Linkous’ struggle is evident in every note of his music, including those points when he talks about the wonders of living. This is music from the weird America that Greil Marcus talks about; it sounds ancient even at its most modern, like it was recorded on 78 by a character from a ghost story, or by a sage who could see through rocks to the nerves that throb improbably within them.

Linkous’ story is pretty well-known, so I won’t bother repeating it; suffice it to say that he moved to Richmond, Virginia, to escape evil LA and worked with Cracker as a guitar tech and roadie before recording his 1995 debut LP, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot with the assistance of Cracker’s front man, David Lowery, who recorded it under the pseudonym David Charles. But Linkous was already a man on the edge, and there was the famous incident in which he ended wheelchair-bound for a while after cutting off the circulation in his legs following a brief coma in a hotel room after taking a shitload of meds; he rebounded, but the demons that pursued him and led him to abuse drugs followed hot on his heels.

Vivadixie is an absorbing and eclectic work, mixing found sound (“Little Bastard Choo Choo,” “850 Double Pumper Holley,” “Ballad of a Cold Lost Marble”), hard rockers, and songs so tender they’ll make you weep, and there’s no place better to start than the lovely and strange “Spirit Ditch,” in which Linkous says the owls have been speaking to him (but he’s sworn to secrecy) and sings in a hush, “horse laughter it is dragging pianos to the ocean.” To the sound of acoustic guitars he wakes up in a burned out basement just like Neil Young, with whom he bears a lot in common, and in lieu of a guitar solo he includes a touching phone message from his mother. It’s a haunting song, and about as far as you can get from the hard-driving “Tears on Fresh Fruit” and “Hammering the Cramps,” both of which feature distorted vocals and establish Linkous’ bona fides as a kick-ass rock’n’roller. “Hammering the Cramps” in particular is a mean machine, and makes an impressive din. And at the opposite end of the spectrum we get “Cow,” a sweet and lovely rustic number that includes some great lyrics (“lighting cigars off electric chairs”) and features a divine chorus that consists of Linkous, to the accompaniment of banjo and guitar, repeating “Pretty girl, milking a cow, oh yeah.” It also boasts a great but short guitar solo, and a wonderful instrumental section that takes it out on a beautifully atonal note.

Then there’s the sad and slow opener “Homecoming Queen,” which features a delicately lovely guitar and Linkous echoing Shakespeare with the lines, “Horse, horse/My kingdom for a horse.” Linkous’ obsession with horses is noteworthy; they appear everywhere, and one of the most iconic photos of Linkous features him wearing a horse head. Anyway, “Homecoming Queen” has a companion in “Most Beautiful Widow in Town,” which features a slowly strummed acoustic guitar and Linkous singing a paean in a hushed voice to the well, the town’s comeliest widow. The chorus is divine, and Linkous is at his heartbreaking best on vocals. As for the guitar solo it’s as raw as it is entrancing, and it ends the song.

“Rainmaker” is another hard rocker in the mode of “Hammering the Cramps.” Again Linkous’ vocals are distorted, and the drums take a battering, and the chorus is so great it defies human comprehension (okay, so that’s a bit of hyperbole). The guitars roar, and the rainmaker is coming, and the guitar solo is to die for. A great tune, as is the driving “Someday I Will Treat You Good,” which opens with a howling guitar and moves at about 100 mph and features yet another great chorus. “Everything that is made/Is made to decay,” sings Linkous, whose obsession with mortality rivals that of his obsession with horses. Not so raucous but far lovelier is the slow and comely “Saturday,” a love song that is sweeter than tupelo honey and features the great lines, “I play great keyboards/Of horses’ teeth/On Saturday/Saturday.” This is truly one of the loveliest songs I’ve ever heard, and what makes it most impressive is its modesty.

“Weird Sisters” features a heavy-sounding guitar with simple drumming, and goes about 8 mph. It has an uneasy feel to it, and sounds like a processional to the grave, albeit with a cool instrumental section that is as beguiling as Linkous’ vocals are plain and emotionless. “Now I can see/There’s a bad moon/On the rise,” he repeats twice, before a long second instrumental interlude takes the tune out. “Heart of Darkness” is another love song, albeit of a stranger stripe. Linkous sings about having “one last dance in this parking lot” before confessing to having a heart of darkness, and the country instrumentation gives it a homespun feel, but it’s over before you know it. Far more divine—it’s perhaps the best song on the LP—is “Sad and Beautiful World,” which bears a Lou Reed-like melody and some nice brushwork by the drummer. Slow, very slow, it is, with Linkous singing in a hush, and by so doing turning the chorus into a eulogy. The simplicity of the song is remarkable; his execution even more so. After it comes the slow “Gasoline Horseys,” which references Charles Baudelaire and features nothing but Linkous and a guitar. He mentions “bellies full of clocks” and hair that smells like sunshine, and sings “Gasoline horseys will take us away” to end the song.

Mark Linkous was a lost soul, as we all are in our ways, but he possessed the uncanny ability to disappear in the beauty of his songs, which will continue to move me so long as I draw breath. Like Elliott Smith the world, to cite Wordsworth, was too much with him, and his loss haunts me the way the natural world haunted him. I think of him every time I see a horse, and I listen to him whenever I’m so lonesome I look in the mirror just to see another human face. Oddly enough the lonesome and haunted feel of his music makes me feel less alone, and that’s a great gift. I picture him, when I think of him, walking alone across a pasture in the morning mist, growing vaguer and vaguer as he disappears into the fog that stands above a farm pond in Virginia, just another soul vanishing into the emptiness that will swallow us all, every single one of us.

GRADED ON A CURVE:
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