A Camp - Colonia (2009)

A Camp is Nina Persson's side project from her main band The Cardigans. Their first album was produced by Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, who said he thought her songs sounded like Jimmy Webb, however this album is produced by her husband, Nathan Larson. The basic theme of this album, as the title suggests, is colonialism. I've never heard the first album, that Mark Linkous produced, but listening to this really makes me want to. It's a pretty damn good collection of countrified indie pop.

Tracklist:
1. The Crowning
2. Stronger Than Jesus
3. Bear On The Beach
4. Love Has Left The Room
5. Golden Teeth And Silver Medals
6. Here Are Many Wild Animals
7. Chinatown
8. My America
9. Eau De Colonia
10. I Signed The Line
11. It's Not Easy To Be Human
12. The Weed Had Got There First

Download: megaupload

Angela Faye Martin - Pictures From Home (2009)

I can't really find too much about this album online. From what I can find, it seems like Angela Faye Martin was from the same town as Mark Linkous, yeah, that guy I'm obsessed with who played in that Sparklehorse band. Anyways, I guess they lived close to each other and were friends, and Mark Linkous wanted to produce some of Angela's music, so he produced this album. It's somewhat similar to Sparklehorse, you can definitely hear Mark's production, and I think it's really great.

Tracklist:
1. Strawberry Roan
2. Pictures From Home
3. The Woods Get To Know Me
4. Summer Of Lightning
5. No One Can Wake You
6. Widow's Lament
7. Adieu, Mr. Higginson
8. Still Life With An Empty Bottle
9. The Ballad Of Lolita Dean
10. Land Of The Noonday Sun

Download: mediafire

Salt Chunk Mary - Demos 1992-93

After the Dancing Hoods post, here's a little bit more Sparklehorse history. After Dancing Hoods broke up, Mark Linkous moved back to Virginia and joined the band The Johnson Family with his brother Matt, as well as former members of the band Honor Role, Steve Schick and Chip Jones. The band eventually changed their name to Salt Chunk Mary, and in their short life span released 9 demo songs, one of which is an early version of "Someday I Will Treat You Good" which was Mark Linkous' first hit as Sparklehorse, and was also included on the movie Laurel Canyon starring Christian Bale (which Mark also makes a cameo appearance in).

Thanks to chromewaves these demo recordings have become available online, though while you have to download each file individually from him, I put them into a .rar file to make things a little easier, but I definitely recommend checking out his blog, because without him, this post wouldn't be possible.

Tracklist:
1. Won't Know If You Don't Try
2. Rest Your Worried Mind
3. Instrumental
4. Someday I Will Treat You Good
5. I Take It All Back
6. There Ain't Nobody But You
7. Break My Mind
8. I
9. Sorry Now

Download: mediafire

Dancing Hoods - Hallelujah Anyway (1988)

Before Mark Linkous started making solo music under the Sparklehorse moniker, he was the front man of New York City power-pop band Dancing Hoods. Dancing Hoods are comparable to The Replacements, though less-edgy. With this album, Dancing Hoods were making an obvious grab at success after the rave reviews of their debut album, and they came close as "Baby's Got Rockets" was a minor hit on college radio. However, after the release of this album, the band moved from New York to Los Angeles to attempt to get the attention of a major label, but they never did, and broke up because of it, and thank god for that. This isn't a terrible album, it's actually quite enjoyable, though doesn't come close to the beauty Linkous put on record as Sparklehorse.

Tracklist:
1. Torn Away
2. Baby's Got Rockets
3. Better Look Up
4. Puppet Dancing
5. Welfare Shoes
6. Border Patrol
7. Diamonds In The Mine
8. Falling Down
9. Tell You Something
10. Crooked Angel

Download: mediafire

Mark Linkous Is Sparklehorse (video)

A rare and intimate 50 minute biography on the great Mark Linkous released in 1998.

Sparklehorse - Good Morning Spider (1999)

Word's can't really describe how much I love this album. It's definitely one of my all time favorite's. I'd say it's about as good and important to me as Pet Sounds.

Tracklist:
1. Pig
2. Painbirds
3. Saint Mary
4. Good Morning Spider
5. Sick Of Goodbyes
6. Box Of Stars (Part One)
7. Sunshine
8. Chaos Of The Galaxy/Happy Man
9. Hey, Joe
10. Come On In
11. Maria's Little Elbows
12. Cruel Sun
13. All Night Home
14. Ghost Of His Smile
15. Hundreds Of Sparrows
16. Box Of Stars (Part Two)
17. Junebug

Download: mediafire

Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot + bonus 7" (1995)

Sparklehorse's debut album, and one of my favorites. Sad and beautiful lo-fi psych-folk. Recently re-issued on vinyl by Plain Records, and bundled it with a bonus 7" including 2 tracks previously released on the Distorted Ghost EP.

Tracklist:
1. Homecoming Queen
2. Weird Sisters
3. 850 Double Pumper Holley
4. Rainmaker
5. Spirit Ditch
6. Tears On Fresh Fruit
7. Saturday
8. Cow
9. Little Bastard Choo Choo
10. Hammering The Cramps
11. Most Beautiful Widow In Town
12. Heart Of Darkness
13. Ballad Of A Cold Lost Marble
14. Someday I Will Treat You Good
15. Sad And Beautiful World
16. Gasoline Horseys

Bonus 7":

1. Waiting For Nothing
2. Happy Place

Download Album: mediafire
Download Bonus 7": mediafire

Sparklehorse Live in Milan 22/05/2007 Video

Some of the videos are cut a little short but it's still cool to have video footage on almost an entire concert.

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse - Dark Night Of The Soul (Instrumentals) (2010)

"Dark night of the soul is a metaphor used to describe a phase in a person's spiritual life, marked by a sense of loneliness and desolation. It is referenced by spiritual traditions throughout the world, but in particular by Christianity."

So the story of Dark Night Of The Soul is that Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse) came to Danger Mouse with a instrumental for a song he wrote called "War" and said he didn't think he felt right singing it. This turned into a huge collaborative project where Mark Linkous wrote a series of songs and got other artists (Iggy Pop, The Flaming Lips, Jason Lytle, Vic Chesnutt, Black Francis, Nina Persson, Scott Spillane, Gruff Rhys, Suzanne Vega, James Mercer, and David Lynch) to write lyrics for these songs, and sing them. Danger Mouse produced the album, and David Lynch made a series of photographs said to be a visual narrative for the album.

At first, due to legal issues with EMI, there was a possibility that the album would never be released, though on the official website( http://www.dnots.com ) the book of photography was available for sale, and came bundled with a blank CD-R, which was obviously intended for people to burn their own copy of the album since it had leaked heavily through blogs.

When the album finally had an official release, it was released in several different formats, one of which being a deluxe box set limited to only 5000 copies worldwide which included a condensed version of the book of photography, a poster, 3 lobby cards, a photo print, a copy of the album on a double LP, a copy of the album on CD, and a copy of the instrumentals from the album also on CD.

Here's the instrumentals.

Tracklist:

1. Revenge
2. Just War
3. Jaykub
4. Little Girl
5. Angel's Harp
6. Pain
7. Star Eyes (I Can't Catch It)
8. Everytime I'm With You
9. Insane Lullaby
10. Daddy's Gone
11. Man Who Played God
12. Grim Augery
13. Dark Night Of The Soul

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