•
Rating: Trip to Turin, solo. I would have climbed mountains on foot to see this concert; I've been waiting for it for too long. I know I'm in the right place. Beautiful colorful murals welcome my artistic thirst. Lo Spazio 211 is a very small venue, it reminds me of the middle school dance hall complete with a disco ball spinning on the ceiling and a little stage raised by two steps. There is practically no division between the audience and the musicians. The opportunity to embrace, in such an intimate environment, all the sensitivity and intensity released by the music of Sparklehorse makes me feel on cloud nine! Well, I had my first live contact with the genius Linkous in a stadium, before the R.E.M. concert, you can understand!
So I don't mind at all waiting until midnight, when Christian Fennesz takes the stage. He has an extensive table of electronic equipment and a laptop in front of him with which he begins to tinker. A device doesn't seem to work as it should, but no worries, a little "slap" and the red light turns on! Thus, he starts creating an interesting base of effects that soon erupts into a thunderous sonic eruption when he picks up the Fender. The electronic wave cannot disperse in such a confined space; instead, it crashes against the walls only to bounce back with doubled force. Given the time and the infernal heat, this causes some dismay among the audience, surprised by the overload. A brief performance but enough to pique my curiosity about his type of music... just as a friend told me, the peculiarity of Fennesz is to play the guitar in a way that sounds like anything but a guitar!!
Stage change, finally, the fateful moment approaches. Oxygen begins to run out and the audience packed in a handkerchief starts to make itself heard. Someone steps out to get some air, I remain glued to the front row. Now I truly have chills. A red stool is placed in front of the microphone, and behind is a projection of a white winged horse on an ochre background. Here we are! Finally, Mark Linkous makes his entry, welcomed by the exhortation of those present. He sits down. Glasses on and fisherman's hat pulled well down on his head, but even so hidden, the audience seems perfectly tuned to his frequencies. And indeed, he starts playing with a magical noisy box in his hands, there are star-shaped stickers attached to the edges. I wonder if this has anything to do with the Box Of Stars from the two tracks on Good Morning Spider. The fact is that he appears completely absorbed in creating the familiar effects and interferences that introduce the first song "It's a Wonderful Life". He has a double microphone or dual-headed microphone, following a continuous dichotomy, one of them filters his voice, it corrodes it. And just to set things straight immediately, he sings "I’m the only one who can ride that horse down there" and, on a background of slowed waltz, music box, and digital dust in contrast, with his usual disarming simplicity, adds "I’m a swamp of poisoned frogs".
The bittersweet comes out more prominently in the decadent "Weird Sisters", where the slow advance of sharp guitar strums reigns dominant, alternating with the thin voice... always on the verge of breaking but never breaking. The song wonderfully closes in a small trot, a chord progression that reveals a glimpse of hope. It's the anthem... At the first notes of "Homecoming Queen", applause erupts so much that Mark stops and invites us, if we want, to sing along in the chorus. But there was no need to say it since the choir of voices begins immediately from the Shakespearean attack "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse"!! The voice is a pin supported by other voices. "Grazie, Grazie" he will keep repeating in Italian throughout the evening. From these first songs, you start to understand the leitmotif around which the entire setlist will revolve... Mark has decided to introduce us in-depth to a side of his music, perhaps the predominant one. Like a retrospective, a performance of only slow and haunting songs, subtle, intangible, yet, for those who truly listen, emotionally devastating and sublime. The power pop and rock outbursts are completely absent, so those among the audience loudly requesting "Pig", "Hammering the Cramps" or "Happy Man" will hear "next time, I promise". I confess I was eager to see the legendary drummer of the American tour Johnny Hott in action in songs like Apple Bed (go on YouTube to see), but the initial bitterness for the absence of the traditional band, bass and drums, turns into a happy surprise. Not everyone is destined for such a special set!
Joining Mark on stage for the occasion are The Dead Texan. Christina Vantzou on his right creates the foundations, dealing with Mac, glockenspiel, keyboards, and toys. Adam Wiltzie (Stars of the Lid, Aix Em Klemm) will also join later with another laptop and second guitar + keyboards. A fourth element is the stunning projections created by Christina, who is also a filmmaker. Her visual environments, different for each song, enhance the strong empathy already present, going hand in hand with the melodies and lyrics soaked in Linkous's imaginative world, of gaseous spaces and American farms. The animation of a man running down a road and getting lost along an unreachable horizon accompanies the sweet and melancholy "Saturday". "I would go back and forth from hell to see your smile Saturday" and so he sings about the inability to express a feeling to someone because it is postponed to the next Saturday, postponed to a guitar riff that opens fresh and suspended. Let it be.
In accordance with the lyrics, it is especially natural subjects and the animal world that appear in the videos. Little birds changing color and shape on the trees, mushrooms swelling and expanding during "Sad and Beautiful World". It's certainly not the bucolic paradise of the golden age… diseases, ghosts, and horrors are always around the corner, but every time the sun's rays manage to find a gap through those thick clouds, it's a spectacle, an immense joy, a sparkling light... like the beauty radiated by "Sea Of Teeth", leaves you breathless: "Can you feel the Venus breeze on your skin/ do you know how to savor the clash of the glow of a dying sunset?/ The stars will hang forever/ in the bleeding mud of summer". Mark reveals that it’s his favorite song among Sparklehorse’s, and who can blame him!! The atmosphere becomes sacred... a synth of organ bathed by spacey sounds and the song, like the animation, flows from the sun to the depths of the sea. The lines of a diver form, who, swimming, occupies the entire background and leads us into the mystery "The seas boil forever/ The trees will turn into soil".
I can't believe it, to prolong my joy he starts with "Hundreds Of Sparrows". A splendid melody that opens with airy violins and golden sparrows and when those words come, you can't help but melt, amazed at how someone could conceive verses like: "My spirit seldom stays in my body/ It wanders across the barren country/ Looking for a place to rest/ Your head on my chest/ And I can feel the pillow of your breast/ You are worth hundreds of sparrows".
After this bright and never predictable romanticism, because it’s always reduced to the bare essentials, shadows loom over the stage. Fire and darkness, "Heart Of Darkness" unfolds like a binding flame as much as it is intense, followed by "Painbirds" that Mark without irony presents as one of the most uptempo tracks of the entire set. He then ventures into a barely hinted falsetto during "Gettin It Wrong". An almost female voice, bewitching, in a highly rendered digital mix that enhances the intimacy of the only piece, and I say the only one, drawn from the new album "Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain"! Even from these choices, you can understand the value of someone who prefers to present what they feel rather than presenting to promote. It’s the purest, naked, and vulnerable artistic expression. It's a leaky faucet as you observe and listen to drop by drop falling. Some drops may fall crookedly and make a splash, but you want nothing more than to collect them because they are essential, because they are precious water.
Almost always drawing from the deck of the debut album 'Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot' as in closing. "Gasoline Horseys", also requested by someone from the audience, slow marches engraving you with its best evocative gloomy lullaby glimpse. Finally, "Spirit Ditch", among my all-time favorites, is the one that starting from concreteness and individual details, "I want my records and the motorcycle gas tank I spray-painted black", catapults you entirely into a surreal and extravagant world. A damn suggestive simple arpeggio, two piano notes chasing each other alternately, and you're wrapped in a mantle of stars, against threatening presences. It's somewhat the crux of all Sparklehorse music to exorcise pain and fears, transforming them into fantastic forms, hidden in the everyday simplicity of things. Turning pain into harmony. Mark exits among the most heartfelt applause.
The encores reserve us two more gems. "Saint Mary", rarely played live, narcotic, drips its spasm in a heart-wrenchingly refined and disarming way and "Babies On The Sun". Christina, for this track, takes a toy megaphone. On the first try, she can't produce any sound, and the amused glance exchanged between Mark and Adam is delightful... but the second time, she doesn't err, reproducing the carefree "laaaa laa laaa" from the record. All three sing. The shimmering horse, before disappearing and after having troubled/delighted us as it knows well how to do on tiptoe, takes up the box of stars to return to a gaseous state and evaporate into the air like children in the sun.
If you think a 50-minute concert is short… start reflecting on the river of words and emotions it generated in an enthralled spectator! Next appearance Mark!
Loading comments slowly
