Sparklehorse - The Black Sessions (2006)

There's 3 song writers that I concider to be pretty influential to me. Brian Wilson, Bruce Springsteen, and Mark Linkous. The first time I heard Sparklehorse, I think I was in the eighth grade. I was kind of a bad ass back then, and a friend of mine went to a cd store to steal some shit because that's how cool we were. I think I was getting something dumb like papa roach, or nofx or something, and my friend wasn't into music, so he grabbed Sparklehorse's "Good Morning Spider" album because he thought the name Sparklehorse was pretty funny. He gave the cd to me after because he didn't really care, he just wanted to steal for the sake of stealing, and I was stealing because my $20 a week allowance wasn't enough to buy things and I was too young to get a job aside from flyer delivery. I think that friends in jail now, I haven't seen him in years, last time I did he told me he was trying to be a rap producer, and then asked me to deposit a $1000 check into my account and give him the money because the bank wouldn't let him deposit it into his or something. Sketchy dude.

Anyways, he gave me the copy of Good Morning Spider after he stole it, and I figured I'd give it a listen because I'm pretty into music, even if it was bad music at the time, and I think the album changed my life. I couldn't get enough of it. To this day I still listen to that album over and over again. But back then it was pretty mind blowing because I don't think I had ever heard anything that was so beautiful, heart breaking, and my young heart (and slightly older heart today) could totally relate to. I felt the songs and it was something I had never experienced before. The songs were like nothing I had ever heard before, and I loved it. I searched high and low for anything else that sounded like Sparklehorse (this is actually how I discovered Spiritualized, who you probably guessed is another one of my favorites) and downloaded or used my $20 allowance to buy anything I could possibly find by Sparklehorse.

Earlier this year I was riding the train to meet up with a friend and I was listening to Good Morning Spider when I came across an article saying Mark Linkous had shot himself in the chest, killing himself. I was heart broken, how could someone whose music was so inspiring to me, and whose music had helped me get through tough times, end up killing himself? It was an awful feeling. My mom tells me she will always remember the day Elvis died, I will always remember the day Mark died.

Anyways, here's a recording of a radio performance from France in 2006 featuring a lot of songs off of his fourth album Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain, as well as songs from his first three albums.

Tracklist:

1.Gold Day
2.Sad & Beautiful
3. Apple Bed
4.Hammering the Cramps
5. Painbirds
6.It's Not So Hard
7.Eyepennies
8.Spirit Ditch
9.Weird Sisters
10.Ghost in the Sky
11.Don't Take My Sunshine Away
12.Someday I Will Treat You Good
13.Homecoming Queen
14.Chaos of the Galaxy/Happy Man

Download: mediafire