Sparklehorse - Piano Fire
"I can't seem to see through solid marble eyes."
Album: It's A Wonderful Life [3rd album]
Genre: Rock, Indie Rock, Shoegaze
Album Release: June 11th 2001
Length: 2.43
Producer: Mark Linkous, Dave Fridmann & John Parish
Vocalist: Mark Linkous [age 35] & PJ Harvey
Label: Capitol Records
Official Audio
Live in 2001 from Richmond, Virginia
Charts, Streams & Sales
Spotify: 17,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 3,000,000 +
Credits
Acoustic guitar, bass guitar (John Parish), electric guitar & piano (PJ Harvey), casio keyboard,
Details
- Sparklehorse means motorcycle. Linkous had affiliated with a motorcyle gang during his teenage years.
- In 1996 Mark Linkous nearly died. His severe injuries were self inflicted and occurred during his first tour with Sparklehorse, supporting Radiohead in the UK. He had overdosed on a cocktail of drugs, including heroin, and had to spend six months in a wheelchair to recover. He would walk again but never regained the full use of his legs. It would be easy to say that music nearly killed him when really it was the drugs. But for a person with a drug problem music provides an easy opportunity to take them and that's the problem.
The previous two Sparklehorse albums had been recorded entirely by Linkous at his isolated farm in Virginia. He played all of the instruments himself. He wrote the songs himself. He produced them himself. It was a process that suited him well, removed from people and away from it all. But the music industry kept knocking. Impressed with his work, the label wanted him to open up and get other people involved. Linkous reluctantly agreed. The resulting album, 'It's A Wonderful Life', featured collaborations with musicians from as far away as Sweden (The Cardigan's Nina Persson) and the United Kingdom (PJ Harvey & John Parish). What was once the work of one man in his isolated farm house had encapsulated the globe. The resulting album was joyful, a foray into the wider world that even saw the grandee of American misfits Tom Waits getting involved.
Even the title of the album, 'It's A Wonderful Life', a joke of sorts, pointed at his widening optimism for music. Previously Linkous had been criticised by the music press for how depressingly morose his music was.
"I got fed up with people in America thinking that my music is morose and depressing and all that. That song is like a 'fuck you' to journalists, or people who are not smart enough to see what it is. But in the end, it was more about how everyday, you should pick up something, no matter how minuscule or microscopic it is, and when you go to bed, you can say I was glad that I was alive to see that. That's really what it's about."
Linkous killed himself in 2010. He had suffered from drug abuse and depression for a long time. He would get clean in 2003 and later told the Guardian "I was so stoned all the time, I ended up doing drugs to feel normal. After rehab I spent three years writing songs but I lost interest in recording them." He only started releasing music again when he couldn't afford to pay his rent. Eventually, in 2010, after a series of tragedies in his personal life, Linkous would lose his fight with depression. He pointed a rifle at his heart and pulled the trigger. He had drugs in his system, alcohol and Benzo's.
So when you're listening to Sparklehorse what you're really listening to is one man's fight with depression. Yeah, it's dark but it's also inspiring, because when everyday's a fight even getting out of bed can take courage. To take such dark feelings and make beautiful music out of them takes real artistry. It's like the sky is full of these big, dark clouds but you can see the sun, forgotten and silently shining in the background, and what you choose to focus on is the sun. Yes, Mark Linkous lost his fight, but we all lose eventually. It's fighting valiantly while we can that really matters. - PJ Harvey features on the album twice. She also appears on 'Eyepennies'.
- Featured on the soundtrack for the computer game 'Life is Strange'.
Lyrics
