Calliope Music Rapid Reviews
Sparklehorse - Bird Machine
Fuzzing Intimacy of a Melancholic Stargazer
Buzzing electric guitar, lo-fi piano, haunting woodwind, and flickering electronics set forth the personal Indie Pop woe of the late, Mark Linkous. Linkous's signature falsetto vocals sit close in the mix, almost whispering tales of longing, remorse, and death.
A simple, yet assertive Indie Rock sound is bolstered through a mixture of scuttling distortion and glimmering secondary effects. Whether it's groaning bass and dark cello, or wiry beeps and glassy acoustic guitar, Sparklehorse emits intimate resonations of deep reflection. Linkous uses a dark vocabulary to paint a surrealist aesthetic of simultaneously leaden and hopeful imagery. It is this marriage of dreamlike poesy, unostentatious instrumentalism, and vicinal vocals that submerge the listener into truly wounded territories.
Unfortunately, due to Linkous' suicide on March 6, 2010, several of the tracks remain unfinished, and lack complete progressions. Its also clear that many tracks are missing a certain experimentalism seen in Sparklehorse's previous records, instead opting for more straightforward Indie Pop and Chamber developments. Still, Bird Machine is an incredibly well crafted posthumous album, a careful rendering that connects Linkous to his fellow stargazers down below; each dreaming of a new, brighter day.
Best Tracks: Kind Ghosts -- Evening Star Supercharger -- Falling Down -- Chaos of the Universe -- Listening to the Higsons -- Everybody's Gone to Sleep -- The Scull of Lucia
7.5/10
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