Sparklehorse: Good Morning Spider : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous is a crackpot rock auteur from the rural badlands of Bremo Bluff, Virginia, where the men are men and the basement studios are where you'll find them. Like the group's overlooked 1995 debut, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, Good Morning Spider is a homemade tour de force of psychedelic Appalachian folk slop, held together by writer-producer Linkous' ruggedly melancholic whisper of a voice. Ballads like "Sunshine" and "Painbirds" are full of clever production gimmicks, but the tape twiddling and odd instruments don't get in the way of their emotional punch; one listen will put "Saint Mary" on your permanent rainy-afternoon jukebox. You can hear coal-mine country in Linkous' guitar, as well as in the way he pronounces the word theater, and he gets help from Southern confreres like Vic Chesnutt and David Lowery. If Linkous lived near a big city, you'd already be sick of hearing about him, but only a bored small-town space cadet could have dreamed up all the ornately beautiful dreams on Good Morning Spider. (RS 806)

ROB SHEFFIELD