Back in 2006 Sparklehorse (Mark Linkous) released Dreamt For Light Years In the Belly of a Mountain and on that album he received production help from studio wizard Danger Mouse. The collaboration went so well that the two decided that at some point down the road they would team up again and release an entire album of original material. Well, it's 2009 and that product is now out. Sort of (in two different ways, read on). All though all lyrics, music, and production were handled by the two, singing duties on all the songs (except one which he shares with Nina Persson on "Daddy's Gone") are delegated to various guests. And the majority of the songs work. The style Linkous and Danger Mouse have crafted on this album is one of melodic, production heavy numbers with a dense atmosphere. That is until you hit the weird (and totally unfitting) tracks 4-6 in which Julian Casablancas (The Strokes), Black Francis (Pixies), and Iggy Pop all turn in rock songs that just seem completely out of place in context of the album as a whole. On the other end of the spectrum, the tracks which feature Jason Lytle (Grandaddy) results in a perfect combination of lyrics, dreamy vocals, and overall production. The album's cherry (though not best track, yet would fit perfectly into one of his surreal, mindfuck features) boasts none other than auteur David Lynch on vocals. And he is the (kind of) third member of Dark Night of the Soul as Lynch was so moved by the album that he took a series of photographs which are being sold in tandem with a blank cd-r to burn the album. That's right. As hinted earlier, thanks to legal trouble it looks as though this album will never be officially pressed and released, so the closest thing to a "physical" copy of this album you will get to is the photograph book as done by Lynch. Which is a shame because this album (atleast 75% of this album) deserves to be properly released to the public.
Official website: http://www.dnots.com/
3.7/5.0
Standout tracks: "Jaykub" "Daddy's Gone" "Revenge feat. The Flaming Lips"
Awesome album, great review, cool background story on the whole project. But how you gonna forget to give us a link to the tunes?? Clearly Danger Mouse is saying we have to download the actual tracks. It's people like you, on blogs like this, that provide those tracks. Get on it!
ReplyDeleteGot it! Thanks! I'm loving Revenge, and loving the parts of it from Sparklehorse's own Getting It Wrong from Dreamt for Light Years... Fantastic.
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