this is appearing in greatly truncated form (cut in half, actually) in
tomorrow's paper; the director's cut to follow is a P2 exclusive... By
the way, Neal baby, none of the following is directed at you - your
take has seemed much more on-target than many I've read. CW
* * *
SPARKLEHORSE with Varnaline
The Horseshoe on Tuesday, April 13
By CARL WILSON
The Globe and Mail, Toronto
The critical reception of Richmond, Va. rock band Sparklehorse seems a
sort of bellwether of the well-meaningly misguided End Times we're
living in. The albums songwriter Mark Linkous has issued under this
monicker (1996's Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot and last year's
Good Morning Spider, both Capitol-EMI) deserve their applause, even
their places on numerous Best-of-the-Year lists.
But Linkous's Valium-and-antidepressants overdose in a London hotel
room the year of his first album has made him press fodder for all the
wrong reasons - though admittedly it's hard to resist bringing up that
a performer was literally dead for a few minutes and had to spend many
months in a wheelchair. (I didn't get two paragraphs without saying so
myself, did I?)
Thus, Sparklehorse is so far a band much more written-about than
heard, and that breeds confusion. After Varnaline's pleasant
Velvets-to-Huskers opening set in a hotly packed Horseshoe club in
Toronto on Tuesday night, the buzz began: "So do you have any idea
what they sound like" "Well, I read . . . " Often, the adjectives that
followed were way off.
Sparklehorse Misconception One is that the name refers to ranches and
rodeos, when in fact the steeds in question are the carousel kind.
True, Linkous comes from a coal-mining family that had Johnny Cash on
their 8-Track, and professes his love for traditional and country
musics. But even his acoustic numbers remain mopey rock, and his best
tunes are true pop, albeit inflected with violin or steel guitar.
Sparklehorse Misconception Two is that Sparklehorse is somehow
experimental, avant-garde, "wild." Yes, Linkous is eccentric enough to
stand out, but no more than college-radio favourites like Mercury Rev
and the Flaming Lips, though without their psychedelic excesses.
Lyrically, he's twisted and tender, but has none of the sting of his
friend Vic Chesnutt, the permanently wheelchair-bound misanthrope who
lends his whine to a track on Good Morning, Spider and whose own songs
seem written by a maudlin-drunk Dr. Seuss.
Linkous does follow his hero Tom Waits in varying his sonic palette.
He had sideman Jonathan E. Segel (ex-Camper Van Beethoven) play
glockenspiel instead of fiddle or guitar on several songs Tuesday
night, and there were some found-sound tape loops and a second,
filtered microphone to put some rusty edge on Linkous's
overgrown-choirboy pipes. And bassist Bob Rupe (of Cracker) spent part
of the time on electric and part on an upright, which cast a shapely
silhouette against the cityscape film loops projected on the stage
backdrop. But unlike Waits, Linkous isn't reinventing music from
scratch, merely putting exiting tools to deft use.
Still, Sparklehorse is one of the most personable, evocative rock
projects going, with an emotional depth befitting someone who can
manage nearly to blitz himself on anti-depressants and yet a
surprisingly sun-kissed optimism of melody. Linkous seems to have made
a slogan as well as a song out of Roberto Benigni's broken-English
line from Down By Law: It's a Sad and Beautiful World.
He seemed a bit tour-tuckered on Tuesday, thanking the crowd for
"staying up so late to see us," asking for whiskey and smokes, and
doing only a grudging encore. But what transpired between midnight and
1:30 a.m. was stimulating enough. In a cowboy hat too big for his
none-too-small head, the lanky singer-guitarist steered his group -
rounded out by drummer Scott Minor - through a set that mixed Spider's
woozy lullabies with the debut's rock rousers, plus the odd mad
moment. (A sound effect goes boing, boing, boing a few too many times,
and Linkous grins, "Everybody! C'mon, dance!"; Linkous returns for the
encore in a rabbit mask.)
Though the arrangements fuzzed out into southern rock too often for my
ears, that wounded voice rang through clearly and Segal's sinewy
violin was on-call to redeem the blander moments. The spookiest bits
were best, such as the Pixies-esque Sunshine: "There will come a time/
Gigantic waves will crush the junk that I have saved,/ When the moon
explodes or floats away/ I'll lose the souvenirs I made/ La-la-la."
La-la-la, indeed - Sparklehorse isn't the cavalry riding to the rescue
of rock, but sometimes you get a nicer vantage point from atop a
merry-go-round.
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