Sparklehorse - Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain Album Review

Sparklehorse
Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain
Album Review

Four years in the making, disrupted by battles with drugs, and stitched together with collaborators as diverse as Danger Mouse, Tom Waits and Joan Wasser, Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain should be a cold, disparate record, an imperfect patchwork, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Wasser and Waits' respective contributions on 'Morning Hollow' are fully immersed in the ambience of the song, with none of the 'special guest' showiness a lesser artist would have commanded, and the album, despite its difficult birth is as cohesive as any in Mark Linkous' back catalogue.

'Don't Take My Sunshine Away' and 'Knives of Summertime' are gorgeous Brian Wilson-does-folk songs, that fail to belie the darkness carried deep within, whereas, on the flipside 'Getting It Wrong' and 'Return To Me' are full of despair and doomed romance. 'Ghost In The Sky' and 'It's Not So Hard' demonstrate that Linkous can write rock songs as well as folk.

What holds these elements together though, is the bleak lyrical tone, and Linkous' frosty, spider's web vocals, that are cast over some moments, and cut through others like a knife.

'Mountains' is a highlight, at its core an acoustic ballad, but enhanced by drifting slide guitars and burbling synths provided by Danger Mouse. In sense, it ties into the title track and album closer, in that they both encapsulate a battle between two different entities. 'Dreamt For Light Years.' is underpinned by a single electronic blip that persists through all the shifts in the ten minute duration of the song. Ghostly guitars glide in and out of the mix, while synths and strings whirr hypnotically in the background. It's not so much man vs. machine, but rather man trying to find beauty in his bleak, synthetic surroundings. There are no real melodies on this track, but it's as beautiful a piece of music as you'll ever hear, and really acts as a summary of the album, finding beauty in ugliness. It's probably this that helped to pull Linkous from the brink, and this album is thus a cathartic tour de force, that stands up against Sparklehorse's own back catalogue, and anyone else's for that matter.

Ben Davis

=======================================================================

Sparklehorse
Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain
Album Review 2

Sparklehorse main man Mark Linkous has had a pretty traumatic ride, with the now-clichéd rock star troubles almost bringing him down. He returned five years ago, cleaned out and sober, with a more uplifting version of his spacey, psychedelic rock on It's A Wonderful Life. Here, however, he returns to the mesmerising form of Vivadixesubmarinetransmissionplot, bolstered by the talents of guests like Tom Waits, Dangermouse and The Flaming Lips' Stephen Drodz. Linkous' quiet voice and unusual choices of melody almost always come off, recalling bands like dEUS more than other spacey acts like The Flaming Lips. This is a proper muso album, almost firmly in the adult end of the spectrum, but altogether accessible for anyone who leans towards rock. Come back to it in ten years and you'll wonder why you didn't recognise its classic status immediately. It could have been made at any point from Sergeant Pepper or Dark Side Of The Moon onwards, so spacey and psych-y is it. It doesn't hit bullseyes throughout, but it never goes further than the 25.

Rating 8/10

Mike Rea