SPIN
August 1996
by Sia Michel

Crazy Horse

Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous finds there's life after near-death.

Sparklehorse frontman Mark Linkous is in admirably high spirits for someone 
who was recently declared clinically sad. Four months after an accident that 
nearly cost him his legs, he's rolling his wheelchair around a San Francisco 
Denny's as he recounts a recent spat with a heckler. "We were opening for 
Cracker and this guy kept shouting at us to play some music," Linkous recalls. 
"I challenged him to come up onstage, but what was I going to do? Run over his
toes repeatedly? Kick him in the shins?" The night before, he had taken on 
another wise guy at the Fillmore, a place he claims is haunted. "It has that 
spooky smell," he says.

What's truly haunted is Sparklehorse's music. The evocative 
vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot is crawling with musical ghosts -- 
bittersweet country melodies, sparkling Big Star quotes, and a lyrical sense 
that's equal parts Frank Black and Neil Young. Recorded mostly at Linkous's 
Virginia farmhouse studio, the album rattles and clanks with what he calls 
"sounds that make my heart feel beautiful and sad."

If the rollicking radio contender "Someday I Will Treat You Good" doesn't 
seem to fit with Linkous's melancholy wonder, it's because it was actually 
penned during his days with a forgettable NYC pop band called the Dancing 
Hoods. He left after a nervous breakdown pitched him back to Virginia, and 
eventually some homemade tapes made it into Capitol's hands with the help of 
Linkous's old friend, David Lowery of Cracker. Then, just after the album's 
release, came the accident.

Jet-lagged after a show in London, Linkous crossed Valium with his 
prescription antidepressants and passed out on a hotel bathroom floor. "My 
legs were pinned under me, accumulating toxic fluids for 14 hours," Linkous 
explains solemnly. "The doctors said I went into cardiac arrest until 
electroshock brought me back to life." As for near-death visions, Linkous 
can't even remember flying to England. "I could have been abducted by aliens 
for all I know."

He'll always have to wear braces on his ankles, although he expects to walk 
again in a year. But those strangely thick eyeglasses Linkous wears on stage 
serve no therapeutic purpose. "I saw an ad of some model making a statement 
with these high-fashion welding goggles," he says. "And I thought, if she 
can wear them, why can't I?" 

SIA MICHEL