Sparklehorse
Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot

A few mornings ago I was in the car, about to, as I do every day, head to work. That morning, like many others of mine, I got up with the usual problems/anxieties from the day before. At the wheel, I was thinking about everything and nothing in particular. Suddenly, I don't know why, my attention was drawn to the figure of a young girl. She was sitting quietly on the edge of a lonely country road. But the most peculiar thing was the smile she had plastered on her face. It was a very strange smile, as if she was on earth, and her thoughts were sitting somewhere else on a cloud, with feet dangling barely out of her lips. Now, God has quarreled a little with all of us, some more, some less. He created and deciphered the world through us and then abandoned us. And just seeing a simple smile is enough to understand how much we have distanced ourselves and continue to move away from the center of the universe, which once belonged to us. And how little it would take to dismantle the gray of the world. I wrote a song about it, it's called "Cow", and it contains everything that young girl told me with her smile.

Mark.

I received this letter from Mark, along with a tape of his home recordings. The songs are very raw, but in my opinion, they conceal a treasure. They are songs of unusual sweetness and original beauty. Mark is undoubtedly a person with problems, and I fear that sooner or later he might do something foolish. After all, great sensitivity has its price. And deep down, I think it's true, as the European philosopher said, that only great chaos can produce a dancing star.
The songs, as I mentioned, are islands of wrenching beauty. Aside from "Cow", a country-rock song with an emotional crescendo of undeniable charm, with the accompaniment of a banjo and accordion keeping pace, there are others that I think deserve to be known and to emerge from the narrow world of this tape: "Saturday", a ballad perhaps dedicated to a lost love, in which Mark's singing recalls the collapse of a dam (as a great Italian singer-songwriter known to few here said), "Someday I Will Treat You Good", an energetic rock with a steady rhythm, a furious song against the ghosts of the future, and also "Sad and Beautiful World", a slow and melancholic declaration of wrenching love towards the world, which I imagine was inspired by a phrase spoken by Roberto Benigni (the Italian actor whom Mark seems to have become friends with through Tom Waits) in 'Down by Law.'
Finally, "Heart Of Darkness", a whispered mid-tempo, enriched by a slide guitar and presumably inspired by Conrad, and perhaps dedicated to all the hearts of darkness scattered around the world, and a little to himself..

There's not much more I think needs to be said, now all that's left is for someone to notice him, I'll do my best to make sure it happens.