Sparklehorse
It's a Wonderful Life
[Capitol; 2001]
Rating: 7.7
Focus can be a difficult thing to maintain in art. Once you've begun creating
something, it's easy to find yourself off on some tangent you never saw coming.
It takes a certain amount of discretion, and often, a certain amount of objective
distance, to decide which roads to continue down and which ones to abandon. In
music, this is, of course, where producers come in. Their job is essentially to
stop the artist from getting carried away with a questionable idea and to
moderate decisions about direction and material.
Past Sparklehorse efforts have been plagued by a certain lack of focus. This
doesn't mean they weren't good records-- in fact, 1998's Good Morning Spider
was something of a creative triumph, even in spite of its general disorganization.
That said, though, hiring an outside producer (not to mention fully ridding
himself of all drug habits) seems to have done Sparklehorse frontman Mark
Linkous a great deal of good. Superproducer Dave Fridmann has developed a
certain Midas Touch over the years, imbuing nearly every album he works on with
a distinctive sonic character, and It's a Wonderful Life has his
fingerprints all over it.
The most focused Sparklehorse effort yet, the album flows along with the grace
of a river occasionally stirred by a rapid or two. The half-songs and quickly
squelched ideas of Linkous' past releases are absent in favor of fully fleshed
pieces stuffed full of mellotrons, optigans, orchestrons, and sundry humming
keyboards. Only once is its flow is only badly disrupted. (We'll get to that
in a second.)
The majority of It's a Wonderful Life brims with electro American gothic
ballads and fuzzy purees of lo-fi and hi-fi aesthetics. There aren't really any
out-and-out rave-ups like "Pig" or "Happy Man," but a few of the mid-tempo
numbers display enough bite for commercial radio play. (I'm asking too much,
aren't I?) "Gold Day" snags the ear with a concise melodic hook and some snazzy
mellotron flutes. And Linkous' defiantly surrealist approach to lyrics is in
full effect here, with all manner of references to smiling babies, organ music,
birds, and celestial bodies.
In fact, some of the lyrics are so surreal that it's hard to imagine they're
even metaphors for anything. When Linkous implores, "Can you feel the rings of
Saturn on your finger?" in the Vic Chesnutt-cast-adrift-in-a-post-modern-sound-collage
number "Sea of Teeth," it's hard to believe that there's much hidden meaning
behind it. Animal imagery also abounds; bees, poison frogs, roosters, dogs,
doves, and horses all pop up on the first track. How exactly the line, "I'm
full of bees that died at sea," proceeds logically to the title refrain of, "It's
a wonderful life," is questionable at best, but the claustrophobic mix of
optigan, static, chamberlin, and Linkous' plaintive delivery redeems the lyrical
content with beautiful production and shimmering instrumentation.
The soulful PJ Harvey duet "Piano Fire" picks up the energy a bit, proffering
lyrical imagery of dusty organs and pianos washing up on beaches, amid a heavily
distorted guitar racket and subtly employed electronics. In different places,
It's a Wonderful Life conjures recent Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, and
Grandaddy, all bands who operate in roughly the same headspace as Linkous. The
quietly bleeping "Apple Bed," in particular, recalls some of The Sophtware
Slump's more elegiac moments.
Unfortunately, there's that one aforementioned sore thumb that interrupts the
otherwise smooth flow of the album, so allow me to preface my next statement
with the following diatribe: I love Tom Waits. His music is rarely short of
brilliant on some level, and I've long admired his position as one of the most
fearless, innovative, and downright unique songwriters on the planet. The man's
craft is his genius personified, and I can't get enough of it.
So why does his contribution to It's a Wonderful Life suck so much? "Dog
Door" is a miserable distraction. Imagine you're floating down a peaceful river
on a raft. It's just you, the trees, the birds, and the fish. You don't have a
care in the world. Then, suddenly, the violent hillbillies from Deliverance
swoop down out of nowhere, pelting you with rocks and shouting an unmemorable
phrase over and over again in an annoying, processed falsetto. That is "Dog
Door." Allow me now to sulk like a denied child.
The flow of the album actually picks back up rather easily after "Dog Door"
finally, mercifully ends, returning to the eerily placid fare that characterizes
the rest of the proceedings with "More Yellow Birds." Soon after, "Babies on
the Sun" closes things on a tired, but musically inventive note, with burbling
electronics and looped string samples supporting typically cryptic lyrics.
It's a Wonderful Life is a strong offering for Sparklehorse, largely
shaking off the excesses of past efforts (maddening Tom Waits collaboration
aside) in favor of cohesion and structure. The focus unfortunately keeps
Linkous from accessing any truly awe-inspiring standout moments like the ones
on past records, but the overall result is a lot more rewarding in the long
term.
-Joe Tangari, October 1st, 2001