Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous takes own life

You’ll read plenty of tributes, analysis and speculation about Mark Linkous’ suicide today. I’ll leave that to others. What it made me do, I’m sad to say, was pull out his music for the first time in a long time. Save for a couple of spins through his Danger Mouse collaboration, Dark Night of the Soul (prescient title now, that) last year, I haven’t sought out Sparklehorse music in a long time. I would put Linkous’ music in the “to be admired more than listened to” category along with many others. I appreciated his artistry, but I was rarely in the mood for it.

I came across Linkous’ music early and incongruously. He was the guitarist and songwriter for Dancing Hoods, a New York foursome that trafficked in college rock (for you young’uns, that’s what we called indie before it was called alternative). The band appeared on one of my favorite MTV shows of the mid-1980s, “I.R.S.’s the Cutting Edge,” hosted by the Fleshtones’ Peter Zaremba. Johnette Napolitano came out and sang with them (this was loooong before the schmaltz of “Joey”… before Concrete Blonde had a record out, I believe). It wasn’t bad, a step up from bar band flannel rock. A couple of weeks later, perusing the used CDs in a Des Moines record store, I came across Hallelujah Anyway, the Dancing Hoods’ second album. A huge sticker on the cover touted it as the first CD picture disc. That’s a laughable concept now, but at the time, the few CDs in circulation (this was 1988) all looked alike, with black letters on silver discs, and that coupled with that MTV appearance was enough to convince me to part with $5.

That marketing ploy obviously tanked with everyone but me, as the band split up not long after. Several years later I heard about Sparklehorse, connecting it with the Dancing Hoods (Linkous’ name is rather notable). It was a shock to hear such different music coming from the same guy. I liked some of vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, but rarely listened to it. Same for Good Morning, Spider, his second album. After that, I would acknowledge but not pursue his new releases.

I saw Sparklehorse open for someone around the time of Good Morning, Spider. It was a good set, though predictably melancholy. There have been times in my life where I have looked to music as a way to sooth the soul, seeking the sounds of someone who has it worse than me. But usually I’m looking for uplift, and Linkous rarely offered that.

Now, he’s gone, and people will parse his music looking for cues that signaled what was to come. There seems to be plenty of fodder there. But regardless of what he was saying, his music spoke to a lot of people, and they’ll always have that. I rarely needed it, but it was always nice to know it was there when I did.