Sparklehorse

Not to discount Mark Linkous' first two LPs, but his third is an intact masterpiece. Easily among the most ingeniously written, produced and recorded LPs of the decade, the album's triumph lies in jarring contrasts -- songs that are at once heartbreakingly human and austerely mechanical and can loll along in dreamy antiquity or burn with wide swaths of distortion. Picking favorites is like trying to identify the best ingredient in a perfectly prepared dish, but "King of Nails" and "Piano Fire" are exemplary of Linkous' inimitable signature.

A Virginia boy, Mark Linkous, moves to L.A., founds an overlooked alt-rock band and
moves back to the mountains. Then he starts playing strange ballads so scruffy and imagistic
that Tom Waits and PJ Harvey cameo on his new album. Linkous has a cracked, untricky
voice, the perfect medium for the slow, elegiac songs of Sparklehorse's third album. He
sings about the interior world in terms of the outside one - emotions and sense a... More >