Artist News Releases

Posthumous Sparklehorse album to arrive later this year

By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 15 June 2023

The final album by Sparklehorse will be released later this year, more than a decade after the death of frontman Mark Linkous. ‘Bird Machine’ has been completed by his brother and bandmate Matt.

The brothers had begun work on the album in 2009, but when Linkous took his own life in 2010, plans for the album seemingly died with him.

However, several years later, Matt and his wife Melissa – who had also played in the band – began working with Bryan Hoffa – an audio preservation specialist at the US Library Of Congress’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center – listening through Mark’s archived recordings.

When they reached his final tapes, they discovered the songs more complete than they had imagined. “It was as though the songs let you know”, says Melissa. “Mark communicated these songs. We just did our best to transmit them”.

Still, the decision to complete work on the album was not one taken lightly. “It’s the hardest decision I’ve ever made”, explains Matt. “It’s difficult making a choice about someone else’s art, even if you’ve known them all your life and worked with them, even if they were your brother and best friend. We had long conversations about not wanting to take this into a different direction. We wanted to bring out what was there”.

“It means so much to me, this last batch of beautiful stuff that my brother was putting together”, he adds. “When I sit down and put on a pair of headphones, I’ll run it all the way through. Everything from ‘It Will Never Stop’ to ‘Evening Star Supercharger’ to ‘Stay’, that’s Mark just letting it out”.

This is not the first posthumous release from Mark Linkous. Shortly after his death in 2010, his collaborative album with Danger Mouse and an array of other guests, ‘Dark Night Of The Soul’, was released.

‘Bird Machine’ is set for release on 8 Sep. Watch the video for first single ‘Evening Star Supercharger’ here: