Mark Linkous; gone but not forgotten

As generally happens when you find out about something entirely earth shattering, I discovered the news entirely by accident. Getting ready to go to work, I was having a quick browse around the BBC's Americas news section, half-heartedly looking at some reviews of the Oscars, when I saw the story. "Sparklehorse Singer Linkous Dies," it read.

And for a moment, I forgot to breathe. Mark Linkous' death manages to be both shocking and expected; after many years of depression and creating some of the most beautiful and damaged music ever recorded, either despite or because of his affliction, he finally put a gun to his head and ended it all.

Now, a few hours later, the BBC story of his death has been moved to one of the sidebars, and in a few hours more, it will disappear, pushed aside by more pressing matters of the day. Of course, if we were talking about the death of someone far more well-known, but far less talented - Bono, for example, or Chris Martin - this would be making all the headlines.

Yet Mark Linkous' death will be mostly ignored, just as his music was, by and large. In spite of being a genius, and having been behind so many truly incredible songs, he was never a celebrity, never had that hit single that would have launched him into the public sphere. In fact, after his first two truly amazing albums, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot and Good Morning Spider, musically, he started to disappear within himself.

I saw Sparklehorse twice live, and both shows were remarkable in very different ways. The first was a very lush concert, with all the synths and extensive line-up of It's a Wonderful Life, while the second was a very stripped down show, with him playing a lot of the earlier songs with very few frills. And what was clear was that the frills weren't necessary, not when you have the abilities of Mark Linkous. I did hope after this second show that he was going to go back to his roots, back to songs with the force of "Someday I will Treat You Good", but it wasn't to be. Everything he did after that (with the exception of the "Dark Night of the Soul" collaboration) became more and more melancholic, more downbeat and always straying further from the idea of an actual "song", per se.

Such was the case with last year's In the Fishtank release; instead of ideas, instead of carefully crafted compositions, it is a collection of synthesizer fiddlings. Interesting in its own way perhaps, but not what it could have been.

And now, it's all over. And as pained as I feel inside, perhaps the worst thing is that there's no one to even explain this to. I don't want to explain Sparklehorse to people just so that they know about Linkous' death. He deserves more than that, and will be remembered by me, at least.