Surviving to make a sparkling return

Somewhere between the worlds of literature and music lies the tortured genius behind Sparklehorse, Mark Linkous, a book-loving Southerner from Virginia whose life experience has loomed greater than his art -- hopefully only until now.\nMoments from death after collapsing in a London hotel from a mix of barbiturates and prescription anti-depressants in 1996, Linkous survived, temporarily paralyzed and forever immortalized in music as "the one we almost lost." \nHaving already proven himself with Sparklehorse's debut, vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, Linkous slowly recovered and became, with the critical success of 1999's Good Morning Spider, "the one death could not shake."\nThere is a greatness to Sparklehorse that cannot be described in words. It's more of a floating essence, an aura that subsumes the listener and surrounds with its thick, gentle ambience. It's poetry and it's song, but somehow it is more than both.\nSinging as if it takes all the energy in his body to utter each word, Linkous presents his vision of It's a Wonderful Life in vivid images. Teetering on the brink of absurdity, these images lead the listener through the complicated mind of the album's invisible host. "Please doctor, please," he cries out in "Apple Bed" (a duet with Cardigans' Nina Persson), "a remedy in a bloody sea/To breach the hive and smoke the bees … the witches will return to their sticky tree knots/I will feel the sun." Through the fuzzed-out guitar and Casio fury of his "Piano Fire" collaboration with P.J. Harvey he quietly rages "I can't seem to breathe with a rusted metal heart/I can't seem to see through marble eyes." And once again he poses questions in "More Yellow Birds," reflecting, "Will my pony recognize my voice in hell?"\nWhile all this might seem inexplicable and uselessly oblique, it's not. Music desperately needs a complicated soul to share his being with the world, to provide us with a reason to listen. Mark Linkous might be that man; and thank heavens he didn't get away.