[nickTunes] Discovering the Gruff Rhys video for "Just War," from Dark Night of the Soul

Dark Night of the Soul, the 2009 masterstroke from SPARKLEHORSE, DANGER MOUSE (with some help from DAVID LYNCH), has been largely forgotten by pop culture at large aside from the notoriety surrounding its release. However, it seems someone named Torrey Meeks also remembers the stirring power of the record, and crafted this amazing video for Gruff Rhys’ contribution, “Just War,” from footage of a Soviet short film made in the '80s. The Daily Beast's Andrew Sullivan noticed it, and posted it on the Dish, with the caption "Just watch." I recommend you do the same: it’s incredibly beautiful in its visual simplicity and aesthetic, and the imagery mixes just so well with the tone of the song. It takes what was a reflection about personal conflict, and makes it about the nature of man and war itself, reducing hundreds of years of bloodshed into a struggle between matches over an arbitrary line.

It’s fascinating to re-evaluate the record more than three years after its intentional leak, and two after its actual physical release. The delay in its release, perhaps, is one of two main reasons for its notoriety. Originally the audio accompaniment to a series of Lynch’s photography, EMI refused to release the CD with the copies of Lynch’s book due to a legal dispute between the label and the parties involved. So, the record was leaked, and the label-authorized CD included in the book was replaced with a blank CD-R, telling the owner to “[u]se it as you will”. Given the nature of the collaboration (guest spots were done by Wayne Coyne, Frank Black, Iggy Pop and many others), it wouldn’t have stayed exclusive, or secret, for very long.

The other reason is due to the tragedies that surround several of the contributors after its release: Vic Chesnutt, whose distressing and dark “Grim Augury” helps to close the record, committed suicide in 2009; and Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, one of the three main collaborators, took his life in March of 2010. Both suffered from depression for years, and it’s this bizarre and painful feeling that consumes the record’s tone. They are the first matches to go; small things that are so incredibly fragile that a few must break before their time.

I earnestly love the record (and wish that the similarly titled Dark Was the Night hadn’t been released that year), but I find myself unable to listen to it quite often. It is the sonic equivalent to Lynch’s portrayal of the real world in his film Mulholland Drive; a frightening place where the demons that haunt all of us in the “dark night of the soul” finally take physical form, set themselves alight, and consume us like the matches in the video.

Most of us don’t see a charred wasteland in our mind’s eye, but a select few do or, sadly, did, and Dark Night of the Soul remains to comfort those who remain and endure.

Nick Johnston is the brand new summer music intern here at the Boston Phoenix. He just wrapped up a solid first week, and as a result, earned himself a three-day weekend.