by Lichfield1979

Created on: November 16, 2008

It's A Wonderful Life by Sparklehorse (2001)

It's a wonderful life? What? A wonderful life? No it isn't. The economy has gone to hell in a hand basket and now the proletariat has to eek out a baleful existence hand to mouth in the gutter eating spiders and cat droppings. When this record was released skyscrapers were being transformed into tombstones in a fiery furnace. Curse you Mark Linkous, with your utopian poison rotting the minds of these sweet and wretched innocents. Unless you were being ironic just to mess with people, because then that would be totally cool.

One - It's A Wonderful Life

From my reviews of the first two Sparklehorse records it will be apparent that I really like this band but I can see the criticism many will be ready to make that Mark Linkous uses too many conceits as window dressing for his compositions and this obscures the considerable strength of the song writing and the musicianship at his disposal. I think it rather lends his sound a majestic beauty and find him to be one of the most fascinating innovators of dynamics and textures around.

"I am the only one can ride that horse"

"I'm full of beans"

"It's a wonderful life."

On the opening track Mark sings such a weirdly depressed and spacey lull it's hard to credit the sincerity of these glib maxims. The music is a pastiche of his one-man band status that shambles with beauty amidst a music box of radio static.

Two - Gold Day

This track, like most on the record, actually has a full band. Some of these people are pretty famous in their own right. Gold Day features Dave Fridmann of Mercury Rev and Nina Persson of The Cardigans, amongst others. Maybe it is a wonderful life if you can rustle up collaborators of that quality. There's more to come, as well. Even so, although this has a fuller sound than the title track, it remains a mellow and laid back affair. The fragile vocal sounds haunted rather than sad and the music is dreamy and lush. "May all your days be gold my child."

Three - Piano Fire

Finally the third track uncoils Sparklehorse's harder edge whilst keeping the vocals soft. PJ Harvey provides backing harmonies and actually almost wrestles the song away from Linkous for a couple of moments. There's a strong acoustic jangle of rhythm guitar, a sturdy bass line, and plenty of electric fuzz. "How do you feel? / How do you feel? I can't seem to breath with a rusted metal heart / I can't seem to see through solid marble eyes." Dave Fridmann, the producer of The Flaming Lips, lends an expert

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