Mark Linkous/Danger Mouse/David Lynch collaboration Dark Night Of The Soul finally gets release date

After being passed around on various torrent sites—not that we’d know anything about that, or even what they are, exactly—since this time last year, Dark Night Of The Soul will see official release in the U.S. on July 13, finally allowing fans to check out one of the last things Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous was working on before his suicide in March. (The album was already something of a mournful affair, as it’s dedicated to and also features Vic Chesnutt, who committed suicide himself last December.) Linkous wrote and recorded 13 of the songs on the album with Danger Mouse, who approached David Lynch about possibly collaborating; inspired by the music, Lynch created an accompanying, 100-page, limited-edition art book full of photographs. Copies of the book—which came with a blank CD-R labeled, “For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will”—were being offered on the project’s website since last year, but with only 5000 hand-numbered editions printed, it seems unlikely that the official release will include it.

However, after more than a year of waiting, at least we’ll finally get to (legally) own one of the more unusual collaborative albums in recent memory, which features vocals from Lynch as well as guest turns from The Flaming Lips, Julian Casablancas, Frank Black, The Shins’ James Mercer, Iggy Pop, Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys, and Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle. (For the curious and impatient, Spin checked it out last May and offered a track-for-track breakdown, saying it “shifts genres from electro-pop and Ringling Bros.-like jingles to sludge metal and country.”) Most of the songs are also currently available on YouTube.