Sparklehorse – Bird Machine

It was never unusual to hear Mark Linkous’s voice tear a hole through the fabric of reality. On his song Chaos of the Galaxy / Happy Man, he begins blanketed under radio static, hiding a gleaming pop song in the hiss. When he finally did let the framing fall away, the cleanness of its melody, the sharpness of its chords, and the clarity of its message, showed his brilliance.

Rarely has a posthumous release felt so emotionally fitting, so lovingly rendered. Bird Machine was salvaged from what contemporaneous reports have recognised as an almost complete album, it was pieced together by Linkous’s brother Matt and sister-in-law Melissa, and embroidered with the help of Linkous’s close friends and collaborators from the far reaches of the avant-garde to the mainstream.

His oft-praised skill of managing to wrench childlike wonder from the depths of pain and self-flagellation runs across this set, even as the production gussies up beautifully sad and simple lines like 'Where were you my kind ghosts when I needed you' in unusually high fidelity for a Sparklehorse song. Beyond the last note of closer Stay, after Linkous sings 'It’s gonna get brighter', a sweetness settles. Bird Machine is a worthwhile coda to Linkous’s legacy.

Listen to: Kind Ghosts, I Fucked It Up, Chaos of the Universe