Musician Mark Linkous' life came to a sudden end in March, when he took his life with a rifle in Knoxville, Tenn. His band, Sparklehorse, was never a top-40 favorite, but Linkous had fans where it counted, among such musicians as Radiohead, P.J. Harvey and Tom Waits.
The Virginia native, who lived in and around Richmond for several years, will have at least one posthumous album — Dark Night of the Soul , a collaboration with Gnarls Barkley's Danger Mouse (with whom Linkous wrote the songs), director David Lynch and a cavalcade of indie vocalists, from Suzanne Vega to Iggy Pop. The album was caught in a legal dispute with EMI Records for more than a year, but now the way has been cleared for its release sometime this summer. It's been widely available on the Internet for a while; the songs are as quirky and spooky as any Lynch movie. Anyone will forgive a few tears when "Daddy's Gone," with Linkous and Nina Persson on vocals, comes up on the playlist.
