The family of the late Mark Linkous has blocked a planned and crowdsourced Sparklehorse tribute album. The non-profit mental health organization Box Of Stars started raising money for the project in 2013 and had raised more than $46,000, none of which will be returned to the album’s supporters.
In a statement released earlier this week, Box Of Stars said it spent all of the money on the album’s production, but that Linkous’ estate “decided that it will not support the project and has threatened legal action if we continue.” The organization says it thus believes “it best not to release the album without the support” of the estate, and says it will try and compensate contributors by including them in other, future projects it’s working on, though what those are is anyone’s guess. Box Of Stars says the “perks” will be “over and above the value of each original individual contribution,” but that’s a relative term, considering donors might have been huge Sparklehorse fans, but not huge fans of whatever the next Box Of Stars project is.
Contributors to the planned album included The Flaming Lips, Dinosaur Jr., Mercury Rev, Mark Lanegan, Califone, the Joy Formidable, Phantogram, and Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle.