Early death freezes a musician in place. Neither Jimi Hendrix nor Janis Joplin ever had a chance to outgrow their hippie looks, Biggie and Tupac remain forever stuck in their feuds. For Mark Linkous, who recorded under the name Sparklehorse and killed himself in 2010, a world of hurt and pain never seemed far away. What was so incredible was his ability to channel that pain into an utterly unique mixture of lo-fi beauty and rage.
A new posthumous album, Bird Machine, shows that his gifts never left him.
