Customer Reviews

Good Morning Spider

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Without question, one of the greatest rock albums I have ever heard in my 38 years on this planet, and I've heard many. Mark Linkous, the genius behind the name Sparklehorse, writes some of the most disquieting, yet profoundly beautiful songs ever recorded. His voice is soft and delicate, and he often distorts his vocals so that they sound as if they are being delivered over a megaphone or telephone. However, this affectation in no way detracts from the proceedings; in fact, it often enhances them, by imparting an otherworldy quality to his music. It would be enough that Linkous has the talent to write and perform his pop gems, but he also has the added talent of being a wizard in the studio. Although this album has been described as "lo-fi", "slow-fi", etc., make no mistake: this is a richly produced and sonically complex masterwork. Listen with wonder, to "Sunshine", where Linkous overlays a beautiful melody and gently sung vocal with diverse elements such as cellos, samples of humpback whales singing, and a telephone answering machine message from compadre Vic Chesnutt. It may sound like a mess, but in truth it is one of the most astonishing songs I have ever listened to. Think of Brian Wilson scoring a David Lynch film, and you may get some idea of the duality that is the essence of Sparklehorse. A true masterpiece.

I heard "Pig" from a compliation cd that my boyfriend made for me. I listened to "Pig" several times over and over. It's a very addictive song. Then I borrowed the whole album and it took a few listenings before I wanted to listen to it over and over. Every song pulls at a different emotion. With "Pig" you just want to sing along with your inner rock star. Then "Painbirds" brings you're inner rock star back down to earth. "Sick of Goodbyes" is another song that you can't help but play over and over. At first, "Chaos Of The Galaxy/Happy Man" makes you want to skip to the next track, but you listen to it. You think it will finally get out of it's "tuning sounds" and onto something else, which is does and it ends up being a really cool track. It seems to be a good transition track from the first half of the cd to the second half. "Cruel Sun" and "Ghost Of His Smile" are in a similar vein as "Pig." "Hundreds of Sparrows" is an absolutely beautiful song that will be going through your head several times over to the point you want to listen to it again because you like it so much.

Don't judge this album by the first or second listen, you have to let this album do it's work with you and you'll never forget the adventure!

It's Radiohead channeled through weird, experimental-era Tom Waits. Mark Linkous, the guy who is Sparklehorse, creates amazing records by picking up what most people would consider musical and lyrical detritus, shining it up and tinkering a bit with it, and then coyly presenting it to you right there under a foreboding, dark, dreamy canopy of stars ... probably right there in the hills of Virginia, where the guy is from.

There are five or six tracks on Good Morning Spider that, when you strip away all the magic and creativity and loving craftsmanship, show how easy it would be for this guy to write the kind of hooky, chart-friendly, guitar-based rock songs that would probably get it more than one customer review every two months and might see the album selling better than No. 1,437, or whatever it was on Amazon's listings.

But be glad that he doesn't go that route. Instead, Linkous drapes those gorgeous melodies with curious instrumentation and arrangements that exude a resigned sort of romantic grace, and he sings his image-laced lyrics in a whisper. It's almost like he's lying flat on his back in a lush green field after taking a bullet in the chest from a Civil War long-rifle, and all he can talk about is how beautiful the sky looks from his wounded, bloody perspective. Despite the guy's obvious emotional battles, he sings about birds and bugs, heaven and stars and dreams.

Calling all purveyors of great pop music: Buy this record immediately. Let's work together to help save this guy's major label deal.

I have over a thousand CD's. I listen to a wide variety of music. Over the years, there have been many albums I've liked, and quite a few I've loved. But then there's a category of releases which exist in a rarefied atmosphere all their own. Albums which possess the ability to still seem fresh and vital after listening to them for years. I only know of a few albums which I would place in this category: Interbabe Concern by The Loud Family. Marquee Moon by Television. Tabula Rasa by Arvo Part. Gentlemen by Afghan Whigs. Maybe the Pixies Surfer Rosa, though that's becoming less appealing as I become an old coot. Anyway, only time will tell, but it seems that Good Morning Spider by Sparklehorse will join that select few as an album which went beyond providing entertainment, and actually became profound events for me. Geez, I sound like a simpering fanboy, but the album is truly that good. Though a wide variety of recording styles are employed by Mr Linkous, the album has an undeniable, powerful flow to it. Honest, organic, and deeply beautiful. I can only hope that Sparklehorse has a long, equally as rich career.

Alt-music one-man-band Sparklehorse veers between rock, punk and who-knows-what in "Good Morning Spider." In the sophomore album, Mark Linkous crafts a sonic extravaganza of brilliant music, strange and surreal and enticingly dark.

It starts off small in the opening minute of "Pig," then explodes into a rollicking staticky rocker. Following up are mournful laments like "Painbird" and "Sunshine," almost inaudible ballads "Saint Mary" and the funereal "Come On In," steady rock-outs like "Cruel Sun," and eerie panoramic sweeps "Good Morning Spider" and both halves of "Box of Stars." One of the strangest tracks is "Chaos of the Galaxy/Happy Man," which languishes in static for a few minutes before blossoming into a solid rock song.

Near-death experiences tend to change a person's life. In Linkous's case, it changed his music -- "Good Morning Spider" is warped by a near-death experience that almost killed him, and left him paralyzed for quite some time. So don't expect happy, perky music -- rather, Linkous seems to be exorcising his demons and experiences all in one swoop.

Like Neutral Milk Hotel, Sparklehorse makes the most of staticky guitars. It has a contemplative lo-fi sound, but is tinged with a few other things -- the bass, gravelly guitar and percussion are joined by violins, cello and organ, along with sweeps of static that give a surreal feel to this textured music. At times it's smooth, at times it's rough, but never ordinary.

His near-death experience shines through Linkous's songwriting, with lines like, "My bones wish to escape," the funeral tone of the children's-prayer-like "Come On In," and the wistful announcement that "All I want is to be a happy man." Even aside from the morbid beauty of these songs, his writing is evocative and entrancing: "A beautiful woman she rose/from the smoking waters of the lake/with a candle that burned in each palm..."

Rarely are so many beautiful songs linked together, and rarely is such raw emotion put into music. Sparklehorse's "Good Morning Spider" is a rare and treasured rock album, and deserves to be a classic.

I know even Mark Linkous himself believes that "It's a Wonderful Life" is a more refined, cohesive effort than "Good Morning Spider." On this point alone, I won't argue. But, for me, there is no more tender and achingly beautiful cd than this one. Tracks like "Junebug", "Maria's Little Elbows" and, especially, "Hundreds of Sparrows" have a depth of spirit that cannot be conveyed in words. I find myself continually emotionally drawn to these songs like a moth to a flame. This is a gorgeous cd. Don't pass it up.

I always wanted a Sparklehorse album, and now that I've got one I'm not sure what to make of it. I've listened to a number of their songs, and I loved all of them (one of my personal favorites being "Someday I Will Treat You Good" which used to be one of those "who the hell does this song?" songs). A couple of my faves of theirs are on here, even ("Ghost of His Smile" and "Hundreds of Sparrows").

So what's the big deal? Is it the mornful lyrics, the songs that almost sound like they're dead on arrival (hushed barely audible vocals, weak strumming of acoustic guitar)? The balls-out rockers that are there not being fully realized ("Happy Man" comes to mind immediately)? The thirty-second short ambient pieces between the real songs?

Mark Linkous is an incredible songwriter, I definitely give him credit for that. He knows how to put together some wonderful pop music, and when he rocks out, he really knows his stuff ("Hammering the Cramps" and aforementioned "Someday I'll Treat You Good"). I know circumstances involving addiction and depression surronded this (I'm not too clear on the details, but I believe he did try committing suicide), which might have lent to the unfinished feel and mornful tone, but I think the real problem is his self-confidence. He doesn't seem to go with his gut; rather than do the great rock music which he should definitely do more of, or build more sad but poppy classics like "Painbirds" or "Hundreds of Sparrows," he instead feels like he has something to prove to all of us. I think that's the main reason why he buried the TERRIFIC melody of "Happy Man" underneath tons of static for the first 2 minutes or so, which is absolutely infuriating. I'm guessing he felt the song was too straight-forward or simplistic, and he had to add something else to it to make it better, or to solidify his indie cred, or whatever, hence the static. I would give anything for him to throw away his short useless song experiments and song-fuzz-making machinery and just go on instinct more.

That said, there's a lot to like here, and Linkous is honestly a very affecting musician, subtle in a time where much is bland and forced. Despite his bad intentions, him and his companions really are making something special, and they deserve all the success they can muster. Check it out if you want to find something unique and relativitely unknown.

It took awhile... I tend to like my weirdness much overtly weirder than this... There's a certain production "value" -- I'll call it "X" here -- very familiar in the current auditory spectrum, and every song recorded that way sounds the same. I'm not talking about just Sparklehorse, but about the thousands of songs I hear recorded a certaion way which all sound identical. "X", then, is rather like "The Borg" in Star Trek -- "assimilate, assimilate" -- and I'll warrant that every brief "era" (yeah, right) in rock music possesses its own identifiable "X" value -- some being far more odious than others. Anyway, a sizeable chunk of Mr. Linkous' two elpees share this current "X" with such bland staples of alterna-fare as Golden Smog, or the first Cracker album -- and it's sad, because, again, it's not the songwriting but the flat production and unengaging arrangements. The songs themeselves are beautiful. That said, I could probably listen to "Saint Mary" five or six hundred times and not get bored. Likewise for "Junebig," "Sick of Goodbyes," the little buglike snippet-songs. All good individually. Just unfocused as a whole. Is that a necessity, that sort of focus? I'm not sure. But in this case, it's conspicuous in its absence.

Quite simply, "Good Morning Spider" is one of the finest and most fully realized rock records ever made. Mark Linkous, the genius who essentially *is* Sparklehorse, nearly died about 4 years ago, following an accidental overdose of anti-depression medication while on a promotional tour for the band's first record, the highly-regarded "Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot". Unconscious in his London hotel room for 13 hours, with the circulation cut off from his legs, he suffered a heart attack when the paramedics were called and moved him, and he was technically dead for about two minutes, before being resuscitated. He had a long recovery and endured many grueling operations on his legs, which at one time doctors thought might have to be amputated.

Happily, Linkous fully recovered and has crafted from his experience an indescribably brilliant and beautiful work of art. The music itself is difficult to categorize, as it involves many different styles. It begins with the Pixie-esque full-on frontal assault of "Pig", then instantly reverses course with the somber, haunting "Painbirds". "Sunshine" is an uncannily wonderful song, with a simple yet unforgettable melody that recalls the Beatles of the Sgt. Pepper era, replete with cellos and wobbly tape effects. "Maria's Little Elbows" is another pop masterpiece. Behind jangly acoustic guitars, Linkous sings, "Sometimes it feels [you] got the emptiest arms in whole world / Try to make sense but it always comes out absurd". The song is wrapped around a beautiful melody, and a chorus that conveys the one word at the heart of Linkous' message - "Loneliness", before the song fades out with its plaintive, lovely coda. You may hear the terms lo-tech or lo-fi associated with this record, but make no mistake: It's a fantastic sounding record that is flawlessly produced and technically perfect. Linkous takes full advantage of a wide array of instruments, vocal stylings and studio effects and tricks. I know not everyone will love this record as much as I do, but there will be many who will, once they've heard it. An unforgettabale listening experience.

This is not a full review. I was reading these reviews and many of you wondered why the terrific song Happy Man was buried in static. I read somewhere that it's been rumored that Mark Linkous purposely "sabotaged" that track after learning that their record company wanted to make the song their next single. He did this because he didn't want to be too commercialized. The "clean" version (called the Memphis Version) of this song can be found on the EP "Distorted Ghosts".