This is the story of three boys, silvery days, chocolate milkshakes, guitars and traces of music. The story of an album that came from the past, some yellowed images. Posthumous records always experience this abyss: on the one hand, it is a missed opportunity, on the other, a miraculously gained opportunity. Because when Matt Linkus (with the help of his wife Melissa) gets his hands on the scraps of music his brother Mark envisioned as Sparklehorse’s fifth album, he’s essentially bringing them back to life, at least for a while. This is not the first time this has happened naturally. This happened with Jason Molina’s Eight Gates, with much of Elliott Smith’s material, or, going back further, with the sketches of Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, or the technological miracle that brought John Lennon back to earth in Free as a Bird. ” Story Bird machine but that’s different. These three children, Mark, Matt and Melissa, who spent their days eating junk food and playing music, deserved a further turn in time. At least one last day together. Sparklehorse earned the nickname, which Mark turned into an emblem while wearing a horse-shaped headdress and holding a guitar.
What was Mark Linkous to American music? What happened to that narrow passage between the eyelids? It was darkness made from light. The child never grew up. Stripped, worn out guitars. Chewed, whispering, distorted voice. And then a potion of raw but incredibly radiant music, like earthly rain turning into linen fabric flying in the wind. “Bird Machine” has it all, and that’s why it’s 100% a Sparklehorse album, minus, of course, Matt and Melissa’s alchemical work in bringing it back into the light. But the important thing is that Mark is here again, like a good ghost. His thick voice talks about himself in Kind Ghosts and about those ghosts that were supposed to guide him before committing suicide. “Where were you when I needed you?” Linkus rolls through a carpet of dreamy electronica.
It was said earlier about darkness and light, Evening star supercharger it is a song that moves along the thinnest line of beam filtered by the closed shutters and A fall Down: balm and tragic ballad. Lucia’s Skull And Everyone went to bed they put together the country side of the album, the one that takes a melody and makes it thrive under the fragile Virginia sun. But there is a song that, perhaps more than any other, brings Mark back to the door, leaning against the door frame with his faltering gaze. AND O child. Dramatic ballad. Song of Dying Time. Childhood that mixes with and permeates the present.
“Oh baby, I know this can be bad.
Oh child, sometimes you’ll be sad
But then the sun comes
And the guns sparkle in the morning”
Mark is inside this poignant lullaby. He himself is a nursery rhyme. The dedication, who knows, is addressed to a nephew, or maybe to a brother when he was little, or maybe to himself, captured in some family photograph. But the thing is, we listen to it as if it’s about the whole concept of childhood. “Bird Machine” ends with two very short tracks: Blue AND Stay. The first is entirely instrumental, the second with barely a voice mentioned. In fact, it is both, that drop of light at the foot of the door that leaves behind a ghost, this time, unfortunately, forever.
2023 | Anti-
SUMMARY: 4/5
