Mark Linkous: Last News

The final album by Sparklehorse will be released later this year, more than a decade after the death of frontman Mark Linkous. ‘Bird Machine’ has been completed by his brother and bandmate Matt.The brothers had begun work on the album in 2009, but when Linkous took his own life in 2010, plans for the album seemingly died with him.However, several years later, Matt and his wife Melissa – who had also played in the band – began working with Bryan Hoffa – an audio preservation specialist at the US Library Of Congress’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center – listening through Mark’s archived recordings.When they reached his final tapes, they discovered the songs more complete than they had imagined. “It was as though the songs let you know”, says Melissa.

Sparklehorse is set to be released later this year — written by frontman Mark Linkous shortly before his death. Check out new single ‘Evening Star Supercharger’ below.The album was written by the frontman in 2009, and was set to be his fifth studio album, following on from 2006’s ‘Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain’. Recorded alongside Steve Albini at his Static King music studio, work on the album came to a halt following the news of Linkous’ sudden death by suicide in March 2010.

They were never as big as they should have been— though folks like Radiohead, PJ Harvey, The Flaming Lips, Danger Mouse, and Tom Waits took them out on tour, or collaborated with them, or both— but in the late-’90s and the ’00s, Sparklehorse, the indie rock project by Mark Linkous was super beloved by many musicians who have gone on to be very famous.