MARK LANEGAN

Mark Lanegan delves into a darkness beyond the blues

By Matt Ashare

Published: February 14, 2012 http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2012/feb/14/mark-lanegan-delves-darkness-beyond-blues-ar-1689179/

Mark Lanegan Band, Blues Funeral (4AD)

DARK FORCE: Lanegan seduces with the force of a black hole

Mark Lanegan's voice is a deep, dark force of nature, more earthquake than hurricane, more thunder than lightening, more ominous than luminous. It's an instrument of blunt force that resonates with subtle aftershocks, rumbles portentously, and seduces with the irresistible force of a black hole. Lanegan's delivery has the power to imbue even the most playful nursery rhymes with sinister, apocalyptic undertones. He sounds like a guy who hasn't just seen into the abyss; he's looked it over, stared it down, and maybe even jumped right in.

       If there's a downside here, it's that Lanegan doesn't exactly have a lot of range, a failing that became apparent during the grunge heydays of the early ’90s, when the band he fronted, Screaming Trees, flirted with a kind of mainstream success. A product of the rural Northwest, the Trees had been toiling away as burly outsiders on the punk-oriented LA indie label SST for half a dozen years before they landed on Columbia at the height of the great surge of Seattle signings that hit in the wake of Nirvana's Nevermind breakthrough, and scored an alt-rock hit with "I Nearly Lost You," an emotionally wrought rocker that got a big boost from its inclusion on the soundtrack to the movie Singles. But the Trees simply weren't built for radio, alternative or otherwise. And, in 2000, Lanegan finally parted ways with the band to pursue a more modest solo career that he'd embarked on ten years earlier with The Winding Sheet, a spare, reflective, bluesy album that, among other highlights, featured Kurt Cobain singing and playing guitar on a cover of the very same Leadbelly classic Nirvana would later perform on their MTV "Unplugged" album, “Where Did You Sleep Last Night."

       As a solo artist, Lanegan seemed happy enough pursuing a kind of slow build toward something biblical, as his feet became more and more deeply entrenched in the fertile soil that lies at the crossroads where brooding rock meets deep blues. But Blues Funeral, his first solo disc since 2004's ironically titled Bubblegum, marks something of a great leap forward for Lanegan, both musically and moodfully. He's always done dark just about as well as anyone, with the kind of unimpeachable conviction you simply don't find with artists who only dress the part. But this time, you get the sense that he made a point of stepping outside of his comfort zone, of challenging himself to take that voice into alluring corners of the underworld he's never been entirely willing to explore on his own.

       Much of what makes Blues Funeral a creative breakthrough for Lanegan might be chalked up to the simple fact that he's been anything but idle since Bubblegum. By 2004, he'd already been an adjunct member of Josh Homme's Queens of the Stone Age for four years. And he continued lending vocal support to Queens’ albums up through 2007. In the meantime, he began collaborating with Scottish indie songstress Isobel Campbell of Belle & Sebastian on a series of more folk-based albums. In 2007, the British electronica group Soulsavers retained Lanegan as their primary vocalist, and the following year he and former Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli released their first collaborative album as the Gutter Twins. Oh, and Lanegan also found his way onto a track by British producer Jamie LaVelle's forward-looking project UNKLE in 2010.

       Dulli and Homme are two of the more notable players Lanegan put together for Blues Funeral. They round out a cast that includes original Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons and his Eleven bandmate, multi-instrumentalist/producer Alain Johannes. Their impact is felt immediately, as grinding guitars and a muscular beat frame Lanegan's funereal allusions in the album's aggressive opening track, "The Gravedigger's Song." "In my blood flows sleep," Lanegan intones, "And the dark heavy rain/The magnolia bloom so sweet/Only torturing me."

       The blues are still a touchstone here, but the skeletal acoustic sketches that typified Lanegan's early solo recordings have been replaced by fully plugged-in arrangements. Even when he heads back to the delta to call out to the lord in "Bleeding Muddy Water," he's joined there by guitars that surge until they reach a symphonic peak as Lanegan repeats "You are the bullet/You are the gun" like an unholy prayer. It's the kind of haunted, gothic Americana that Gun Club specialized in and Nick Cave has often aspired to.

       Blues Funeral is shot through with dark visages, grim titles ("St. Louis Elegy" and "Deep Black Vanishing Train," to name two), guitars that rain heavily on leaden lyrics like "If tears were liquor/I'd have drunk myself sick," and thundering drums. But Lanegan and his posse use a lighter touch on "Gray to Black," the closest approximation to a pop song this singer's put his stamp on since "I Nearly Lost You." And a programmed beat paired with icy synths takes Lanegan somewhere within the general region of clubland on "Ode to Sad Disco," a mournful, six minute-plus elegy that incorporates some spooky, reverb-drenched slide guitar and finds Lanegan on his knees, contemplating "subterranean eyes," the "hollow-headed morning," and a "diamond headed serpent."

So, yeah, Lanegan can be a little heavy handed with the gloom and the doom from time to time. But it never feels overly theatrical in the black-lipstick-and-mascara vein. It’s just what’s bred in his bones. And he’s also just plain good at it.