Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of the Soul

Label: Capitol

At last -- what is possibly the ultimate in star-crossed albums gets its day. Sadly, two of its key players are no longer here to see it, including one of its lead stars, Mark "Sparklehorse" Linkous, who conceived, wrote and produced Dark Night of the Soul alongside pop-production savant Danger Mouse for a rogue's gallery of guest vocalists. That was last year, when a legal hassle with (who else?) EMI forced the album to be released as a blank CD-r packaged with a book of photographs by David Lynch. The ensuing months have seen us lose both Linkous and Vic Chesnutt, who turns in one of the album's gripping performances on "Grim Augury," to suicide. Everyone will read what they want into the fact of this record, but for music fans, we have a hauntingly beautiful collection of pop, no less lovely for its obviously downcast spirit, as if each singer had just seen their own ghost before stepping to the microphone. On a record of dimly lit highlights, the best, tone-defining efforts go to the Flaming Lips with "Revenge" (the opener), a particularly Beatlesque Gruff Rhys ("Just War") and, strangely enough, Lynch himself, albeit behind some vocal effects. Another winning collab for Danger Mouse, as well as a devastating reminder of beloved artists lost to their own dark nights. (M.L. Thrope)