‘Dark Night of the Soul’, the album from Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse and David Lynch will be finally released on July 13th after a long dispute between EMI Records and Brian Burton (Danger Mouse). The album features a long and impressive list of guests, each of them singing a song that Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse) wrote while working with Danger Mouse on his 2006 album ‘Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain’.
James Mercer of the Shins, Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, Iggy Pop, The Flaming Lips, Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals, Jason Lytle of Grandaddy and Admiral Radley, Frank Black of Pixies, Nina Persson of The Cardigans, Suzanne Vega, Vic Chesnutt, David Lynch, Scott Spillane of Neutral Milk Hotel, and The Gerbils all participate to this amazing album and I just thought such a line-up was too good to be true.
You can stream the entire album here:
Brian Burton, a longtime fan of David Lynch’s films, asked the director himself to join the project. Beside the two songs he sings, Lynch has produced a book of surreal photographs to go with the release, and some of his pictures are right now on display at Los Angeles’ Michael Kohn Gallery until July 11.
The title ‘Dark night of the soul’, a Christian metaphor about a spiritual life crisis marked by a sense of loneliness and desolation, can certainly give an indication of the tone of the album as we hear about dreams and nightmares, lost love, pain, revenge, war, but there are also hope and inspiring tunes. The album is however tainted by the sad suicides of Mark Linkous, who tragically took his life on March 6, 2010, and Vic Chesnutt who also committed suicide last December.
‘Revenge’ sung by Wayne Coyne, is spacey and dark with sad and melancholic string arrangements over a slow keyboard tune. This dark and self-reflective song is about revenge, ‘In my mind I have shot you and stabbed you through your heart’, and it does even end with the distressed line ‘And the more I try to hurt you/The more it backfires’
‘Just War’ (Gruff Rhys) has definitively a uplifting melody whereas the lyrics depict some kind of end-of-the-world imagery. So strange and so beautiful at the same time, the melody could lead you to imagine a walk on a happy sunny day with a scenery like this one around you: ‘The last survivor crawling through the dust/And furthermore/Will evolution diminish right in front of us/There is just war.’
‘Jaykub’: Jason Lytle sings this song with his very distinctive voice as if his ordinary and somewhat sad life was passing in front of his eyes, while dreaming of a more rewarding life,… everyone is a hero in his head: ‘Then the alarm goes of and you’re a sad man in a song’.
‘Little Girl’: Julian Casablancas brings the Strokes delivery with a fluid and slick electric guitar for this wordy song about a ‘tortured little girl’.
‘Angel’s Harp’ is a desperately dark song with a damned scary tone due to Black Francis’ chilling vocals over distorted guitars and electronic beeps: ‘Through you made me a buffoon/You did not hear the words that I did croon/ I’m pluckin’ all day on my angel’s harp’.
‘Pain’ seems a song made for Iggy Pop with his raw and from-the-other-side vocals, it’s dark, nihilist, lost and powerful. ‘Justice, religion and success are fake/And the shiny people stink/Pretty creepy, pretty funny/I’m a mix of God and monkey’! Creepy and funny, a perfect short-cut for the song.
‘Star Eyes (I Can Catch It)’ is sung by David Lynch from what it seems a deep hole or a long tunnel of everlasting melancholic sounds, the echoes of lost love, so heartbreaking and so true.
‘Every time I’m With You’: a keyboard driven waltz about boredom and drunken relationship sung again by Jason Lytle: ‘And every time/I’m with you/I’m fucked up/And you are too/Well what the hell/Else are we/Supposed to do’.
‘Insane Lullaby’: As if you were listening to James Mercer’s pure voice behind a wall of static and parasitic noises. There is some hope when the line ‘Can your batteries replace this heart?’ comes up, but hélas, ‘A good life will never be enough’.
‘Daddy’s Gone’ sung by Mark Linkous and Nina Persson, has a sweet and almost Beatlesque melody, soothing and moving like a childhood book, ‘I woke up and all my yesterdays were gone.’
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‘The Man Who Played God’ or how to shape the world around you with a ‘Dear-Prudence-like melody and the help of Suzanne Vega’s voice. ‘All things you can see around you/You can change them/Rearrange them in your mind’.
‘Grain Augury’: With some church bells, a family drama nightmare, you wonder exactly what’s going on, but it’s only a Vic Chesnutt’s bad dream with gory images and spooky sounds, ‘Catfish were wriggling in blood and gore in the kitchen sink’.
‘Dark Night Of The Soul’ is a surrealist desperation and loneliness sung by David Lynch with echoing vocals and unclear noises as produced by an old record player over a keyboard from the 20’s, ‘It’s a dream world/Dark dream world/Dark night of the soul’.
As each artist offers his or her own interpretation of Sparklehorse’s songs, the album is diverse and rich, but at the time it owns a remarkable continuity, painting with the same brush sadness, pain and hope, mixing with the same palette suffering and comforting sounds. While listening to it, you will go through all the places of the mind, from its darkest to its brightest and vice-versa. At the end, it is always tempting to make a link between art and life, and since Mark Linkous committed suicide, I’m sure a lot of people are going to make the connection, but let’s not go there, it would just be too easy.