Rare endangered sparkling mouse-horse hybrid with flaming lips snapped by David Lynch, but may be extinct

Uber-wierd film director David Lynch has released a film in which an uber-wierd film director manages to get two very different musicians together to record an album with lots of other cool collaborators, but then a row with their record company meant it was buried, and eventually likely to be released with a blank CD in a case containing a booklet with lots of the director's photos; so the album didn't exist, but then you could listen to it on the web. Throw in a few dwarfs, dream sequences and surreal visual interludes, and actresses playing multiple roles interchangably and you would have a typical Lynch film, except that this isn't a film, it's for real.

The artists are Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse (of Gnarls Barkley and the 'Grey Album' which blended the Beatles with hip-hop) and the album was called 'Dark night of the soul' (another name almost ridiculoulsy primted to make me interested), and featured tracks with the Flaming Lips, Frank Black, Vic Chesnutt, Suzanne Vega and many more. It can be heard in its entirety, or track by track, here, although I am not sure if this will remain active indefinetely.

The album is very good, although it is somewhat disconcerting for me to have to listen to it only on my PC, unable to wrench it free and embrace it fully in my iPod and earphones. The opener 'Revenge' with the Flaming Lips is my favourite so far, sounding very like what I imagine Pink Floyd might sound like if I ever actually listened to any of their stuff (I have a feeling this circular logic suggests I should do that soon....), and 'Daddy's gone' with Sparklehorse and Nina Persson (the Cardigans) is very nice too.

I must admit not to being a big fan of the type of music Dangermouse would have been involved in, but I have always had a soft spot for Mark Linkous and Sparklehorse. Linkous is the main force of the band, and releases albums which blend electronica, strange sound effects and distorted vocals with a country edge and a string of guests, from Tom Waits and PJ Harvey to many of those mentioned on 'Dark night of the soul'. He released his debut, snappily titled 'Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot' in 1995 but, a year later, nearly cut his career short with a massive drugs overdose in a London hotel which nearly killed him and left him in a wheelchair for six months.

His music is often compared to that of the Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev, but he does not go for either the science-fiction humour of the former or the spaced psychadelia of the latter, but steers his own course with a blend of wierdness and a particularly sweet vulnerability and strain of heartache which often bubbles up through the odd textures of his songs like a soft side he tries to suppress but which keeps breaking through.

His finest moment for me is 'Maria's little elbows' from 'Good morning spider', in which he sings lines like 'Sometimes I feel I've got the emptiest arms in the whole world' in a way which would touch even the stoniest hearts and where the chorus is basically the word 'Loneliness' repeated several times hauntingly.

I can't find a clip of this song on-line, but my next favourite of his is 'Comfort me' from his next album 'It's a wonderful life' (and all the more valued for nearly having been extinguished by drugs, I guess), which can be seen below:

I love the drum patterns of that song, and the song, actually, has a very comforting feel, at least for me. A short piece with Linkous talking about his music can be seen below:

A typical Sparklehorse song may incorporate static and snatches of other songs, as if a radio is being tuned in or out, foul language, and vocals from different planes and planets. Sometimes this can be somewhat disconcerting (like a gentler version of Tom Waits when he is in particularly noisy mad form) but sometimes it can be sweet and wonderful. It is another example of an artist with a fundamental duality in their output, like Nick Cave (tender lover/scary shouter) and the Cure (lovable pop/existential doom) which I find really interesting.

Anyway, the album is called 'Dark night of the soul', and it is there now, and may not be there forever (perhaps this is just a dream sequence in a David Lynch film, and my hair is acutally standing several inches off my head while a dog runs away with my severed hand), so check it out, or Frank might get you.