SparkleHorse

Close your eyes.
Sit down.
If you are quiet, and your mind is quiet, you can hear the wooden rocking chair beneath you comfort your weight. It does not creak, yellow-press stairs do that.
No, it gives you an oaky groan like an old dog stretching after a good sleep. You lightly and ever so slowly rock yourself on the wooden porch. Further out there is a gentle, omnipotent buzzing, a low chorus of crickets, and river frogs, and junebugs, staking their claim in the rows and rows of cornfield. The hour before dusk is a powerful time. Do not dismiss the last warm breeze. It tells a tale of sun baked crops and soil the colour of good bourbon, a wind that can put old friends' smiles on the faces of strangers. It is a powerful time, for soon the coolness of sundown will wake the cat on your lap, and with her weight and warmth gone, the spell will be broken.
But imagine you could hold that moment forever. Being in love, and alone, your heart forever at peace, and sad, at the same time.

I first heard Sparklehorse lying on a grey carpet in a tiny apartment, five years ago, in Iidabashi, Tokyo.
Its one of the rare moments in my life I can say I found something so essential, that my insides had been so thirsty for, and that I hadn't even known that I was looking for.
Here was an album called "It's a Wonderful Life", with 13 songs telling me that i wasn't alone. That some pain lasts, and the weight you feel on your heart is there to remind you that you're alive and that you've lived. Its good. Very very good. I spent three weeks travelling Japan and only listened to one album. When I hitched to this little spot called Tono, where they had never seen a westerner in the flesh, I was listening to "Gold Day". And when we crashed that bike we stole after a bottle of Jose cos the trains had stopped, I had "More Yellow Birds" playing in my head.
Its mainly one guy, Mark Linkous, who writes all the tunes and used to play most of the instruments, although now he has a rotating line up of musicians. He's a very interesting character, very humble and incredibly talented, and not a little depressed. In 1994 he packed up and moved into an old cabin in the woods, somewehere in north america. It was winter so he'd wake up at five each morning to feed logs to his boiler, to try heat up the house for the day. He says he wrote all the stuff for their first album that year, in those early hours watching the day get born. Isn't that a nice story? Pretty gutsy too I think, since he's forthright about the heavy depression that has always plagued him, and you'd think going to live on your own in a cabin might not be the healthiest thing for a manic depressive?

But bygones, he wrote the VivaDixieSubmarineTransmissionPlot album and luckily for us hasn't stopped since then. It came close though. One night while touring the album in London, he chucked back some valium and anti-depressants and passed out. The position he lay in cut off his circulation and he woke up the next day crippled. There is a grim irony in getting crippled by anti-depressants I think, and I like to think thats the way he saw it too cos he went on to record such a fine album, "Good Morning Spider".
Sparklehorse is slow, be warned. They have some super-cool rocking indie tracks, like "Some Day I Will Treat You Good", "Happy Man" and "Ghost of his Smile". But mostly its like listening to a bunch of cowboys who got their hands on some synthesisers, through your grandpa's gramophone. They mix their simple slide guitar rythms with mellow moog melodies to put your soul at ease, but leave the radio static buzzing in the background to remind you that the world can indeed be a hard and unforgiving place.
Mark has since recovered the use of his legs (good man!), and I got to see them play in London in '03 at the university of londons rec hall. Now look, straight up, that was the best concert I've ever been to. No smoke or crazy light effects, no kids moshing, no 'extreme' sports going on.
Just, Music.
I remember at one stage turning around, and facing the 300 or so audience, and watching every lip mouthing the words as Mark sang them, and getting this really nice snug feeling. Actually, come to think of it, I still have 2 shots of that gig at home. If I could just figure out how to put a frikkin picture on this blog, then i'll upload them.

So yeah, by now it should be painfully clear that I am totally and unashamedly Sparklehorse-bevok. And if you can listen to "Most Beautiful Widow in Town" while watching the sun go down, with a glass of Jack in one hand, and not feel anything, then on your bike. You'd better find the wizard cos you got no heart.
But if you do, and you like the cat on your lap and are happy to do nothing but sit on your wooden porch and watch the sun go down, then good for you. And that song you hear, coming from the old kitchen radio, all tinny and faint?,.. yeah thats Sparklehorse.

They are, and will always remain, one of the greatest bands ever.