The details are pretty heartbreaking and the singer, multi-instrumentalist of creaking, sad/beautiful songs, evidently shot himself in the heart after receiving a text message that brought him over the edge.
We here at the Playlist were huge fans but we’re not the only ones, as an outpouring of grief came from musicians who knew and loved the underappreciated band —described by the NYTimes, not completely off the mark as “psychedelic Appalachian folk slop.” Bands and artists like Radiohead, Death Cab For Cutie, Steve Albini, the Flaming Lips, Califone and more all gave eulogies and reactions to the news of the departed singer who struggled with depression all of his life.
While Linkous didn’t have obvious ties to film, he did have a great appreciation for all things cinematic and actually worked with quite a few notable filmmakers during his day. Obviously his most recent film-like collaboration was an album titled Dark Night of the Soul with producer Danger Mouse, and director David Lynch. Sadly, the project was tied up in legal quagmires and then ironically freed of such impediments the week before Linkous committed suicide. But the artist worked with many notable directors for many of his music videos and here’s a few examples, which are a nice collection and emblematic of his work from both a musical and cinematic perspective.
Sparklehorse – “It’s a Wonderful Life” directed by experimental Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin.
Sparklehorse – “Dog Door” directed by the Quay Brothers, known for their hauntingly strange animated films.
Sparklehorse – “Pig” directed by Sophie Muller — perhaps one of the most undersung music video directors ever, who has been making music videos for three decades now including notable clips for Björk (“Venus as a Boy”), The Jesus and Mary Chain, Hole, Weezer (“Say It Ain’t So”), No Doubt, Blur (“Song 2”), Garbage, Coldplay (“Trouble”), The Strokes, Maroon 5, Lily Allen, and countless others (she must have directed over 100 music videos in her career). Muller was actually once considered as being another edition to the now defunct, Director’s Label Series. And strangely enough, she has not once made the leap to feature-filmmaking like many of her peers (whatcha waiting for girl? You got the chops).
Sparklehorse – “Sick Of Goodbyes” directed by Sophie Muller
Grant Gee, the director of the documentaries, “Joy Division” and the Radiohead tour doc, “Meeting People Is Easy” also directed the video for “Devil’s New,” but it appears to unfortunately not be online. Garine Torossian’s “Babies on the Sun” video also is disappointingly not online.
Sparklehorse – “Little Fat Baby” directed by Michele Civetta (who worked on that 42 second short films project, “OneDreamRush’ for Vodka/ Bacardi).
Sparklehorse – “Comfort Me” — anyone know who directed this? The info appears to not be online and we’ve exhausted a lot of searching options.
Another cinematic moment that many don’t remember at first is the fact that two Sparklehorse songs are featured quite prominently in Lisa Cholodenko’s 2002 film, “Laurel Canyon” which starred Christian Bale, Kate Beckinsale, Frances McDormand and Alessandro Nivola as a British rocker who is recording an album in L.A. Two of the songs that the band “write” and record in the film are actually Sparklehorse songs and Linkous wrote the song, “Shade And Honey,” specifically for the film (also catch the role of Lou Barlow as the bass player of the band and a cameo of Linkous hanging out at a party on a couch) Again, unfortunately no scenes of Nivola singing appear to be online, but you can hear him singing the song in the trailer. Anyhow, this is our long-winded way of saying, rest in peace Mr. Linkous. As the song goes, “there’s a heaven, there’s a star for you.”