Sparklehorse – Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain
The music of Sparklehorse is roots-rock, but the roots aren’t buried in the earth. Instead, they’ve been upended, spreading outward like branches, drawing their sweetness and energy from the thin air.
Mark Linkous sings as though gingerly threading his way through the inverted roots. Not unlike Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne, he nurtures a childlike quaver, but he is shyer than Coyne. He resembles, at times, a spirit remembering what it was like to be alive, or a phantom haunting his own songs.
Corporeal forces do, however, power much of this record. A few tracks assembled with the help of DJ/producer Dangermouse (now famous as one-half of Gnarls Barkley) feature shrewd samples and programming, while the snarls of static within the noisy “Ghost In The Sky” keep Linkous from floating too far into space.
Yet “Ghost In The Sky” is, along with the Golden Smog-like foursquare drive of “It’s Not So Hard”, a rare moment of fire in the Belly. Five years after Sparklehorse’s last album, It’s A Wonderful Life, Linkous still favors meandering exploration over the direct approach.
Even the instrumentation — a backward guitar solo in “The Knives Of Summertime”, a seemingly disconnected piano passage (from Tom Waits, no less) in “Morning Hollow” — often sounds like items scattered across his path rather than things Linkous deliberately incorporates. The overall effect is simultaneously relaxing and disquieting, like lying in the grass and watching storm clouds gradually block out the sunlight that shafts through the branches. Or roots, as may be the case here.