R.I.P. Sparklehorse

Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse has taken his own life. His family has released a statement saying,

"It is with great sadness that we share the news that our dear friend and family member, Mark Linkous, took his own life today. We are thankful for his time with us and will hold him forever in our hearts. May his journey be peaceful, happy and free. There's a heaven and there's a star for you."

Linkous who has been releasing wonderful alt-blues records under the name Sparklehorse since 1995 was also a keen collaborator working with Fennesz, PJ Harvey, Tom Waits and of course Danger Mouse on last years Dark Night Of The Soul.

In unrelated (and infinitely more positive) news EMI have announced that Dark Night Of The Soul will get an official release in the middle of the year.

Bawley (Hearts) 2009: Top 5 albums of the year: Nick

In a rare display of Bawley team synchronicity, my top 5 of the year contains 60% of the albums in Hummer's 5. I have a hunch that this has more to do with the paucity of quality albums in 2009, than anything else, but who knows?

Here are my 5:

5 Doves, Kingdom Of Rust

With their fourth album, Doves didn't quite achieve the Elbow-style breakthrough that I speculated about in January, nor did they quite hit the highs they achieved on 2002's 'The Last Broadcast', but they did break a lot of ground musically to produce a really solid album that was sonically interesting from beginning to end.

4 The XX, XX

A band, absolutely unheard of at the beginning of the year, pool their record collections to forge a style that's halfway between indie and r&b and sounds quite unlike anything around at the moment: intimate, unselfconcious and strangely compelling.

3 Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

The party album of the year: full of great tunes, and no messing about.

2 Mumford & Sons, Sigh No More

The hotly tipped Mumford & Sons launched their debut album at a hoedown in a barn in Hertfordshire, and with it started an unlikely bluegrass revival. Really impressive album all the way through.

1 Sparklehorse & Dangermouse, Dark Night Of the Soul

It's a real shame that my album of the year is not available anywhere, but when it contains some of the best work by some of the most interesting artists of the last decade, and still ends up being better than the sum of its parts, how could it not be?

Bawley (Hearts) 2009: Top 5 Albums of the Year: Hummer

5. The Horrors – Primary Colours On Primary Colours The Horrors recruited Portishead’s Geoff Burrow and ditched their goth punk in favour of rich moody textured rock. The result is one of the year’s best albums, which helped the band prove themselves to be more than the tidal wave of skinny jeans, haircuts and hype that overshadowed their 2007 debut.

4. Danger Mouse and Sparkle Horse – Dark Night Of The Soul With its high art concept, Hollywood-style promotion, massive list of contributors, legal battles, 50 pages of glossy art work and David Lynch weirdness, Dark Night Of The Soul was going to be brilliant or a kick in the balls. Brilliant it is - the kick in the balls came when it was revealed that the album will never be released.

3. Fever Ray – Fever Ray Droning, monotonous and claustrophobic: not words you would normally associate with great pop albums, but then again Fever Ray’s debut is not a normal pop album, just a great one.

2. The Xx – Xx The self-produced debut album from London upstarts The Xx is gloriously downbeat: delicate guitars weave between trip hop-esque beats while the spoken boy/girl vocals give the feeling that you are eavesdropping on a private conversation.

1. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix finds the band doing what they do better than anyone else – danceable indie-pop with touches of shoegaze, dabs of ambient electro, a splatter of euphoric highs and lashings of Gallic cool.

Bawley (Hearts) 2009: Top 5 album covers of the year

Album art just about managed to survive the shift from record to CD (from 12 inches of cover space down to 5) but the move to digital downloads and ever shrinking mp3 player screens are proving difficult for many of today’s artists.

Not all hope is lost. Here are five of the best examples of album cover art circa 2009.

5. Neko Case – Middle Cyclone

Neko Case crouched on the bonnet of a muscle car, sword in hard ready to pounce...enjoy the album, just don’t get in her way.

4. The Xx – The Xx

The CD version of this album comes in a black cardboard sleeve with the ‘X’ cut out revealing the white inner booklet. A great idea that translates to a great image when shrunk down to 100x100 pixels.

3. Manic Street Preachers – Journal For Plague Lovers

The cover of Journal for Plague Lovers, an oil painting by Jenny Saville, was judged to be too offensive for public display.

Apparently the heavy red and brown brush strokes can be interpreted a blood on the boy’s face – of course, this is a subjective view.

Commenting on the controversy, singer James Bradfield said:

"You can have lovely shiny buttocks and guns everywhere in the supermarket on covers of magazines and CDs, but you show a piece of art and people just freak out ... We're not going to censor it or anything ... It is what it is."

2. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz

This action shot of a lady’s hand, chipped nail polish crushing an egg, perfectly captures the bands dangerous energy and, like many of the great album covers, it works no matter the size.

1. Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse – Dark Night Of The Soul

The cover art for a blank CD-R. The release of the Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse/David Lynch collaboration was scuppered by legal issues, but rather than bury the project the recordings were leaked to the internet and collaborators released a limited edition 100 page booklet with an accompanying blank CD-R. The packages sold out in near record time, proving that modern music fans will pay for quality album art.

Bawley (Hearts) 2009: Bottom 5 album covers of the year

The best record of 2009* is being released on a blank CD.

So, the previously reported  Sparklehorse/ Danger Mouse/ David Lynch collaboration, 'Dark Night Of The Soul', featuring a galaxy of guest stars, has finally emerged.

And it's streaming in its entirity over at NPR.  And it's absolutely brilliant.  While these collaborative efforts generally amount to somewhat less than the sum of their parts, this project really seems to have brought out the best in everyone involved, and thanks to the skills of Danger Mouse and Mark Linkous, it hangs together really well as a proper studio project, rather than a compilation album.

It's a bit of a shame, then, that EMI aren't allowing the music to be released.  The statement on the Dark Night Of The Soul website states that "due to an ongoing dispute with EMI, Danger Mouse is unable to release the recorded music without fear of being sued by EMI"  but, for fifty of your US Dollars, plus a ridiculous thirty-seven further dollars to ship overseas, you can buy a 100 page book of photographs compiled by David Lynch, which will "now come with a blank, recordable CD-R. All copies will be clearly labelled: 'For legal reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will."  110 Australian Dollars for a lavishly packaged blank CD?  hmm.

The legal dispute probably relates to The Grey Album that Danger Mouse illegally released, which mashed the Beatles' White Album up with Jay Z's Black Album.  The audio part of Dark Night Of The Soul is widely available on file sharing sites.  And elsewhere...

Surely this arrangement means that everybody loses out.  EMI really do seem to be trying their very best to destroy themselves at the moment.  

*Well, it's the best one I've heard so far.

Dangermouse + Sparklehorse = DANGERHORSE!

Sparklehorse is the name under which Mark Linkous has recorded four brilliantly woozy alt.country records over the last 15 years, including 2001's masterpiece (and one of my all time favourites), 'It's A Wonderful Life'.

Danger Mouse is the genius super-producer who is in Gnarls Barkley, produced the second Gorillaz LP, and the most recent Beck album, did that 'Grey Album' thing, and a bunch of other stuff.

Together, they are DANGERHORSE, a collaborative project that's been talked about since 2006, but, which now - finally - seems to be bearing fruit. Well, 'DangerHorse' was the working title anyway. But they don't seem to be using that name anymore.

A 'mysterious poster' has been sent to a number of bloggers (not us, sadly), promising an album - 'Dark Night Of The Soul' in summer 2009. It also boasts an eye-watering list of collaborators: Black Francis (Pixies), Jason Lytle (Grandaddy), Julian Casablancas (The Strokes), Nina Persson (The Cardigans, A Camp), Iggy Pop, Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals, Neon Neon), James Mercer (The Shins), Vic Chestnutt, Suzanne Vega, The Flaming Lips (!), and David Lynch (!!). It's presumably all the artists who wanted to be on album with the words 'Dark' and 'Night' in the title in 2009, but missed out on that other one. Other than the above, details are non-existent at the moment, (this website doesn't shed a lot of light) but if the album emerges and is anywhere close to the sum of its parts, it could turn out to be the best record of 2009. Possibly the greatest thing ever.