a sunken barge's horns, with the cold and rusty bells

carrd / patreon

ONE TON PREY

a lion attacking a horse – george stubbs / scheherezade – richard siken / pig – sparklehorse / sabbath – jenny hval / racehorse: get married! – jordaan mason and the horse museum / cop car – mitski / harmony – nancy conant

Daffodil VonCullen by lulugurl101 (2010)

Magnolia Electric Co. “Josephine” (2006)

Sparklehorse “It’s a Wonderful Life” (2001)

Sparklehorse - "Saturday"

there's this woman's voice singing along in some parts of the background of 'piano fire' by sparklehorse and i like to imagine it's chloe singing along since it's one of the songs she plays in her room :)

Mark Linkous *September 9, 1962

Farewell to a friend

My friend I moved to LA with introduced me to Joe Matt when I first moved here. They had met on Myspace and she said I should meet him. Coming from a small town and growing up conservative, I was introverted and had a hard time meeting people, making friends, or even talking. So when I met Joe, I was immediately swept away by his huge personality and inviting nature. He'd ask questions and be intensely interested in the people he met; it made me feel for once like even I might be an interesting person. It was so comforting to find someone I could so easily talk to, someone who was brutally honest, always willing to offer criticism, but never judgemental.

And oh how we talked. The initial shared interest in films (I was thrilled to find a fellow Buster Keaton fan) and literature was a constant binding force in our friendship over the years. Having mostly ignored comics after my childhood, Joe Matt rekindled my love for comics—both because I found his comics so refreshingly honest and insightful and because he introduced me to so many other great works, from his Toronto pals Seth and Chester Brown to Charles Burns to E.C. Segar's brilliant Popeye comics, a whole new world opened back up to me and I started to find myself interested in drawing again.

I could go on and on about how much he influenced me, not just in comics, but in life: getting rid of my car, discovering my love for coffee, always searching out the ridiculous in not just life around me, but in myself as well. He was one of the funniest people I've ever met, always able to find something to laugh about. Truly, Joe was a singular man, and his time he shared with me made my life so much better. I miss my friend. I regret not having had at least one more conversation with him, but then I'd have wanted at least one more…and so on.

who up guiding their voices? who up sparkling their horse? who up building their spill? who up nicking their drake?

pig by sparklehorse inspired mixed media collage (2024)

I need a fucking cigarette

i drew pponie im so cool

Dr. Giggles by lulugurl101 (2010)

Sparklehorse — Bird Machine (Anti-)

Photo by Danny Clinch

Bird Machine by Sparklehorse

When Sparklehorse released Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot in 1995, it felt like an outlier. At the time, during the height of Britpop, there weren’t many artists making slow-motion, country-influenced, lo-fi rock music like Mark Linkous. His aesthetic brought together a classic pop sensibility with a junkshop approach to instrumentation and timbre, where a song like “Chaos of the Galaxy / Happy Man” from second album Good Morning Spider literally sounded like tuning into a radio transmission. He collaborated with PJ Harvey and Tom Waits on It’s a Wonderful Life, and on the title track of fourth album Slept For Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, he painfully evoked the syrup-thick sensation of depression. Though Linkous was candid about his mental-health struggles, when he took his own life in March 2010, it was still a shocking and tragic loss.

Bird Machine is technically the fifth Sparklehorse record, and was worked on by Linkous in the months leading up to his death. This posthumous release has been lovingly put together by Linkous’s brother, Matt, and his sister-in-law, Melissa — and they’ve done a fantastic job. It sounds just as a Sparklehorse album should, and is a surprisingly upbeat listening experience given it was recorded during Linkous’s final months. Among the 14 songs are some searingly fuzzy numbers, such as opener “It Will Never Stop,” “I Fucked It Up,” and “Listening to the Higsons,” a Robyn Hitchcock cover. There’s the sparklingly Beatles-esque “Daddy’s Gone,” the bright, Mellotron-laced “Evening Star Supercharger,” and “The Scull of Lucia” is reminiscent of Radiohead’s “No Surprises,” with a naïve, music-box feel to its melodies.

It’s in Bird Machine’s heavier moments, though, where the album really hits home — and the loss of a unique artist is most keenly felt. The harrowing “O Child” is so slow and sparse that it feels like it could fall apart at any moment, and the lengthy instrumental outro includes fractured, static-flecked dictaphone recordings. On “Everybody’s Gone to Sleep,” Linkous taps into a mellow Yo La Tengo vibe, his vocal sounding uncannily like Ira Kaplan. After the brief guitar instrumental “Blue,” “Stay” is a heartbreaking piano-driven closer, reassuring a loved one “It’s gonna get brighter,” yet sounding as if Linkous is already heading towards the light. And on standout “Kind Ghosts,” which belongs among Sparklehorse’s finest songs, the lyrics are all the more bittersweet given the context: “Where were you, my kind ghosts, when I needed you?” Let’s hope they were waiting for him on the other side.

Tim Clarke

She don't worry all them murders of crows

Even though they was always out of reach

She don't get up when I come into the room

She don't run through the fields anymore