(Credit: This Is Sparklehorse)
Defunct American indie rock band Sparklehorse have actually dropped the very first single from their long-delayed last album Bird Machine, ‘The Scull of Lucia’.
Sparklehorse was the primary musical task by singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mark Linkous. Across twenty years, the band launched 4 studio albums and 2 EPs, plus a collective album with manufacturer Danger Mouse and a collective EP with Austrian manufacturer Fennesz.
The band ended when Linkous took his own life in 2010. In Linkous’ obituary printed in The New York Times, band supervisor Shelby Meade validated that Linkous had actually finished the majority of the work for a last studio album at the time of his death. It looks as though that product is now coming out as Bird Machine.
“From the very first seconds of ‘The Scull of Lucia,’ I was transported to a different time,” the album’s manufacturer Joel Hamilton said in a news release. “The recipe is unmistakably Sparklehorse: The pace, the sounds, the overall texture of the voice.”
“Every sound seems to support the voice and the lyric, which was always at the core of Mark’s genius,” Hamilton included. “The weight of the world, floated on a rickety raft, across a sea of melancholy.”
Bird Machine was finished with the help of Linkous’ bro Matt and sister-in-law Melissa, plus a few of Linkous’ previous bandmates. Most of the album’s tunes were tape-recorded with Steve Albini in Chicago in the instant months prior to Linkous’ death.
Listen to the audio of ‘The Scull of Lucia’ down below. Bird Machine is set for a September 8th release.
