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Jul 11, 2023 By Kat Ramkumar Photography by Danny Clinch

“The Scull of Lucia,” a previously unreleased song by Sparklehorse, the music project of the late Mark Linkous, has been shared. It is the latest release from their upcoming posthumous album Bird Machine. This LP, which was produced by Joel Hamilton, is due out September 8 via ANTI-. “The Scull of Lucia,” is a quiet, intimate track where you can hear every change of inflection of Linkous’ voice. Jason Lytle of Granddaddy also contributed harmonies to the song. Listen to the song below.

After Linkous tragically took his own life in 2010, his brother Matt and his sister-in-law Melisaa, who had both worked with Sparklehorse, sifted through boxes of tapes to catalog and preserve Linkous’ unreleased recordings and eventually brought Bird Machine to life. Bird Machine was produced with the help of Alan Weatherhead, mixed by Joel Hamilton, and mastered by Greg Calbi, who previously had close ties with Sparklehorse.

Of “The Scull of Lucia,” Hamilton says in a press release: “From the very first seconds of ‘The Scull of Lucia,’ I was transported to a different time. The recipe is unmistakably Sparklehorse: The pace, the sounds, the overall texture of the voice. Every sound seems to support the voice and the lyric, which was always at the core of Mark’s genius. The weight of the world, floated on a rickety raft, across a sea of melancholy.”

ANTI- previously shared the the album’s first single, “Evening Star Supercharger.”

Read our 2006 interview with Sparklehorses’ Mark Linkous about his fourth studio album Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain.

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