Dark Night of the Soul is an unbelievable album.
For realsies. Through the combined efforts of Danger Mouse– whose 2004 mashup opus fittingly titled The Grey Album caused EMI to furiously shake its fists over the use of unrequested Beatles’ tracks from The White Album combined with a cappella version of Jay Z’s The Black Album– and alternative folk rock aficionados, Sparklehorse. Plenty more after the jump.
Oh yeah, and just about everyone else in music today makes a cameo: Julian Casablancas, Iggy Pop, The Flaming Lips, Frank Black of Pixies fame, The Gerbils, even David “Twin Peaks” Lynch contributed a 100+ booklet of photos to accompany the music (Lynch is also featured on a track as well).
Unfortunately, the album is currently somewhere in distribution hell due to a series of snags from the aforementioned bully, EMI. Luckily, intrigued fans are able to get their grubby paws on a blank recordable CD-R copy of the album through the Dark Night of the Soul Web site. The disk comes with a label:
“For legal reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will.”
That’s bad-ass, right? Right.
Although the album is readily available for streaming and, well, other means if you put some imagination into it, GQ recently named Dark Night of the Soul the “Album of the year…that never came out.” You know, those well-dressed sons-of-bitches are absolutely right. It’s a curiously haunting, calming, catchy, lo-fi carnival ride lasting 46 minutes and 18 seconds. I could go into some real specifics on the track listing, but frankly it’s something you should give a shot at yourself. It’d be like giving away the ending of New Moon if I said anything.
By the way, Jacob dies in the end.
Just kidding, I have no idea who that even is.
Take a look at the terrifying album promo while I go looking for my copy of Blue Velvet on VHS.
