Good Morning Spider - Sparklehorse

Good Morning Spider by Sparklehorse (1998) Producer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Linkous recorded most of this record himself, not long after his protracted recovery from a drug overdose that had him confined to a wheelchair for half a year. As well as singing, he plays guitar, bass, piano, wurlitzer, optigan, sampler, vibraphone, harmonium, concertina, percussion and drum machine. He is joined on various tracks by cello, drums, cornet, violin, piano, and pedal steel guitar. Linkous is extremely talented when it comes to dynamics and sonic textures, and captures some extraordinary moods in an original fashion. He's equally happy employing aching ...  Read the complete review

Good Morning Spider is an astounding, consistently surprising (even after the nth listen), eclectic collection of songs, of noise, of light and dark. It is, depending on where one might choose to begin, a punk rock record, a lonesome alt. country tear-jerker, a staggering lo-fi white noise squall or, simply enough, an all guns blazing Rock N Roll onslaught. What it is not is any way predictable or safe. Neither is it at all forgettable. Released in 1998, the record toys with many of the same ideas evidenced in the debut Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot - notably the back-and-forth between roaring, punk-rock abandon and gentle, melancholy, pre-dawn still. ...  Read the complete review

Written when Mark Linkous couldn't decide whether he was into punk rock ("Pig"), lo-fi ("Happy Man") or whether to wear the troubled troubadour badge ("Painbirds"), a stranger collection of songs you're unlikely to find unless you've got the new Aphex Twin album. It's testament to Linkous' ability that every song sits happily next to the preceding and following ones. Opening with the punky thrash of "Pig", the uninitiated could be forgiven for thinking that they were in for a wall of distortion and feedback over the next 60 minutes, and would almost certainly wonder what was going on when 3 acoustic ...  Read the complete review