Customer Reviews

It's a Wonderful Life

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Sparklehorse auteur Mark Linkous has assembled his most coherent, melodic and most emotionally powerful album yet. The lyrics are cryptic, but suggest some private language of symbols waiting to be decoded, thus they can seem immensely personal instead of merely opaque. It's a nifty trick, and one Linkous excecutes stunningly well. The sound of the record is the same lo-fi, decaying, Waitsian-music-box gloom that set the backdrop for the other Sparklehorse record... but there is a new attention to melody and detail. The addition of guest femal vox (PJ Harvey among them) also adds dimension to this album. Waits himself guests on "Dog Door", which, depressingly, is the weakest track on the album... but it's still far from bad.

There is the sense, thoughout this record of things falling apart, decaying, rotting, never being heard from again. Indeed, it delves deep into dark territory, and such a journey carries no warranty of safe return. Take this journey with Sparklehorse if you will, intrepid listener, and be warned: It sounds like a last ride. But, let us rejoice that Linkous's rusting, whiskey stained world still spins on its axis... at least for the time being...

Why this wasn't released domestically first is beyond me (will the tracking be different when it is?) I forked out the cash when, on a lark, I looked for it and found it and now I'm better for it. This so surpasses "Good Morning Spider" that its five star rating should readjust to 4 to accommodate "It's a Wonderful Life" properly at five. It's as beautiful as its title forecasts, but characteristic of Linkus it's also paradoxically unsettling, though the sweet and generous tone of the album renders even its darker moments strangely liberating and hopeful ("I wore a rooster's blood when it flew like doves. I'm a bog with poison frogs." Chorus: "It's a wonderful life, etc."-you'll see what I mean). There are no tracks as fast and furious as Pig here. Instead the tone has mainly settled into the sleepy-sweet pacing of songs like Sunshine and Pain Birds-with some exceptions, of course. All the forgivable inconsistencies of Good Morning Spider are gone with this release, and there's no doubting that its balance and proportion have much to do with Dave Fridman's hand in the production (he plays on the album, too). Fridman has got to be the best producer alive: everything he turns out is aural candy, a quintessential head-phone album, and this is no exception. In fact, judging from my present infatuation with It's a Wonderful Life, this surpasses not only Sparklehorse's own previous efforts, but those of the Lips and Mercury Rev as well. And P.J. Harvey and Tom Waits sing on this album for Christ's sake! There's religion here.

Admittedly, I am a recent Sparklehorse fan. I've only owned this cd for a week or so, and have yet to purchase any previous offerings, so I cannot compare it to previous works.
But it truly is a wonderful life once you add this one to your collection. What the heck is this guy Mark Linkous talking about anyway? Did I just hear that right?--"I'm the dog that ate your birthday cake?"--I don't know, nor do I care.
I'm not a big lyrics guy anyway, but "Gold Day" has made me one. I'm sorry, but this song is one of the most amazing and beautiful things I have ever heard: "...piles of smiles..." You'll be wearing piles of them when you hear "Gold Day" for the first time.
Add the title track, "Sea of Teeth", and the wonderfully fuzzy-strange "Dog Door"(With the equally strange Tom Waits) and you have something truly special. A lot of unusual instrumentation here, innovative and eye- (or ear-) opening sounds that are refreshing and truly something to behold. I swear my entire stereo vibrates while I'm listening to "Dog Door," and it's not just because of the heavy murky bass.
It's A Wonderful Life takes you to wonderful places. There's fuzzy stomping, but never pounding, songs like "Piano Fire" and there's subtle, gentle music that soothes you and lifts you, like "Sea of Teeth" and the bonus track at the end of "Babies on the Sun."
Fantastic cd, and now that I know, I will move quickly to acquire as much Sparklehorse as I can get my hands on. Technologically, there could be some Radiohead comparisons made, particularly from Kid A, but Sparklehorse sounds nothing like Radiohead stylistically.

"I wish I had a horse's head, a tiger's heart, an apple bed."

I'm still confused, but I'm loving every second it. I don't listen to the radio, so I wouldn't know, but I doubt anything from Sparklehorse would get much airplay. Best to find out about it firsthand and buy it. Turn down the lights and get ready to clear your head for a while. You won't regret it.

As a sidenote, on the above tracklist, the no. 6 song is listed as "King of Snails", when it is really titled "King of Nails." And its brilliant in its own buzz-growl kind of way.

To the reviewer who said Mark Linkous has gotten too weird on this album, I say, "Poppycock and balderdash." This album would be a great introduction for people unfamiliar with Sparklehorse simply because it is more accessible and homogenous than the others. Though "Good Morning Spider" holds a dearer place in my heart than this album, "It's a Wonderful Life" is a beautifully crafted album and musically it's brilliant. I have no idea what Linkous is talking about half the time (these are some of the most cryptic lyrics I've ever heard), but it makes no difference. He's a musical genius, and this is an absolutely fantastic album. Please buy it. NOW!

How does one follow up a modern indie classic, such as Sparklehorse's "Good Morning Spider"? In the case of "It's a Wonderful Life," they just keep on going. This album is more mellow and polished, but Mark Linkous's songs still ring with melancholy indiepop and fuzzy rock.

The title track sets the tone for the rest of the album: A soft guitar melody, with faint bubbles and chirps lurking behind it. The nonsensical lyrics can't hide the melancholy in Linkous's voice, which lets up a little in the soft, sweet flute ballad "Gold Day." "In silver piles of smiles/may all your days be gold/my child," Linkous sings fondly.

At first listen the songs sound very much alike. But repeated listens reveal little nuances -- the intimate cadences of Linkous's voice, fuzzy rock riffs, violins, a pretty piano melody. "More Yellow Birds" is particularly pretty, with its hesitant singing and swelling string arrangements. Linkous sounds almost painful in this song.

Fortunately Sparklehorse has not lost its experimental edge here, even though the experiments sometimes fail. For example, "Dog Door" is a mess of hoarse vocals and a thumpy rock sound that degenerates into fizzing and wild feedback. The fifteen-minute finale, "Babies on the Sun," is more palatable: a slightly eerie ambient buildup to a solemn guitar ballad.

Musically, Sparklehorse has almost no flaws -- the musicianship of this album is almost perfect, and the strange lyrics give it the quality of a dream. It's not music that sounds in any way normal. Instead it feels like a sonic painting of Mark Linkous's psyche, with all the love, pain, sorrow and beauty that can be expressed in words.

None of the songs make conventional sense. No my-girlfriend-left-me-and-life-sucks songs. Instead Linkous strings together colorful phrases about circus people, ghosts, dogs that ate birthday cakes, and skinny wolves. And he has the occasional moment of sheer brilliance: "Can you feel the wind of venus on your skin?/San you taste the crush of a sunset's dying blush?"

String arrangements in rock music are getting more and more common, but they are rarely put to such brilliant use as in "It's a Wonderful Life," right alongside odd chimes, mellow acoustic guitar and some very slow piano. It seems tailor-made for Linkous's oddball vocals, which might sound weird if he didn't always seem so sad and pensive.

Sparklehorse's "It's a Wonderful Life" is an enchantingly polished follow-up to their outstanding sophomore album. It bewitches, and transports you away. Not to be missed.

Mark Linkous knows a thing or two about melancholy. He knows how to take the listener on a sonic journey through his brittle and fragile world. On this album, his solemn compositions do not strike with the immediacy of the harsh, distorted Sparklehorse of old. "Pianofire" is melodic rock wrapped in a fuzz of feedback, scratchy beats and a rousing PJ Harvey on backing vocals but this is as close to "rock" as it comes. "Gold Day" features Nina Persson, who's perhaps better known to the world as the lead singer of The Cardigans. Persson's pretty and fey voice is well-suited as a foil to the soft-spoken Linkous. Tom Waits also appears in all his distinctive glory on "Dog Door". Sparklehorse again works with strong imagery and abstract ramblings, using cryptic lyricisms that on the surface are quite intriguing. Part of the magic is trying to decipher those wilful messages, but that would be missing the whole point. This is a gorgeously crafted album, textured and beautiful, and obviously a testament of painstaking musicianship. If there can be one criticism, it seems too somewhat sedate and there's a risk of it being labelled a "mood" record. For it's faults, nothing can detract from the beauty of songs such as "More Yellow Birds", an undeniable highlight. Fans of Grandaddy and Flaming Lips should take a listen; "It's A Wonderful Life" strikes that same soul-stirring balance of hope and resignation.

I must have listened to Vividixie... once a week since it was released several years ago and I consider it one of my favorite albums of all time. Now comes this one, which feels to me like an even further development of Linkus' abillity to blend sonic exploration with emotion. When he experiments, it never feels like he's just trying to be weird. This is an album that, like Vivi... never sacrifices songs for musical risks. It's one of the few albums that you know is brilliant within the first minute. Listen to Sparklehorse on a rainy day and you'll get it.

The title track, It's a Wonderful Life, is one of the coolest songs I've ever heard. It starts out slow and ethereal, but when the chorus comes, it effloresces into a symphony of preternatural sound that blows you away. The cd is well worth buying for that singular track, but there are other highlights like Gold Day, Piano Fire, King of Nails, and Devil's New. This is the first cd I bought by Mark Linkous and co., and I'll probably be looking into buying the rest of their cds now. Buy this if you're in the mood for a pleasant treat.

"It a Wonderful Life" fuels the continued ascent of Mark Linkous' Sparklehorse as possibly the greatest unknown band on the planet. After three incredible records, it seems this man can do no wrong. Astoundingly creative, Linkous fuses sublime, poetic lyrics to melodies that are often staggeringly beautiful, and that can seem incredibly familiar, yet are completely original. Add to this already heady mix his affectation for using outdated instruments and equipment (optigan, mellotrons, wire recorders, etc.), and you end up with some of the most unique music around. Resisting earlier impulses to make a record of heavy rock songs, Linkous ultimately chose to turn the dial in the other direction. Instead, he created a more restrained work with near unerring genius, rendered in such gems as the gorgeous ballad "Sea Of Teeth" (possibly Mark's finest moment to date), in the haunting elegy "Eyepennies", and in the sorrow-laden "More Yellow Birds", wherein the narrator juxtaposes memories of an idyllic vacation on a sunny beach with a nightmare vision of a trip to hell. "Gold Day", is on the other hand, a sunny, wistful blessing, while "King of Nails" is a crunching, distortion-heavy rocker. "Babies On The Sun" sounds positively antiquated, as if Edison himself could have produced it. And need it even be said that "Dog Door", his collaboration with Tom Waits, is audacious, funny, and largely indecipherable? P.J. Harvey and Nina Persson also contribute to the mix, as well as wunderkind producer Dave Fridmann and Portishead's Adrian Utley. This is undoubtedly one of the year's finest releases. Will the masses ever hear it? Doubtful. But you're here, and reading this, and if you don't already own this then you need to. Sparklehorse is one of the best bands out there, and you'll be very hard pressed to find better. And this may just be their best yet.

Mark Linkous (aka Sparklehorse) is a songwriter and producer of the highest calibre. His past efforts have leant more to an electronic pop side of the spectrum (still maintaining a strong country influence) but this album strips back a lot of that tinkering to reveal a majestic and sensitive songwriter.

True, the programming and loops are still there on many of the tracks, but they take on a warmer and more earthy texture on this album, helping add colour to its country roots rather than mask them.

Sparklehorse really is an innovator in the merging of twang and technology. This album demonstrates that, in my belief, more so than ever.

It's A Wonderful Life features a number of gorgeous, medium paced waltzes that are covered in dusty piano's, guitars, and goosey strings, among the other toys Linkous plays with. "Eyepennies" is a crawling pace piano mourn with tender, whispered falsetto vocals (as many of Sparklehorses vocal performances are) and stunning harmonies provided by PJ Harvey. "Comfort Me" centres around a driving, crisp beat that moves the epic song along, while cut and pasted strings lift it into the ether.

It's A Wonderful Life is a real gem from an exceptional alt. country artist.