It may be a funeral Mark Lanegan is chronicling on his new solo release, but plenty of hell-raising is conjured in the procession.
Blues Funeral, released Feb. 7 on 4AD, is Lanegan’s first solo record (technically credited to the Mark Lanegan Band) since 2004’s Bubblegum. Don’t let the eight-year gap mislead you; the two albums bookend the most prolific stretch of Lanegan’s career. In that span, he’s released three folk-country albums with Scottish ingénue Isobel Campbell, an LP and EP as half of the Gutter Twins and two records with British trip-hop duo Soulsavers, not to mention a grab-bag of one-offs with acts various and sundry as Bomb the Bass, Creature With the Atom Brain, UNKLE, the Breeders and Maggie Björkland.
Just as Lanegan’s time with Queens of the Stone Age saw his solo work take on a more hard-rock vibe with Bubblegum, his tenure with the Soulsavers has reciprocated in his incorporation of more electronica elements. Blues Funeral relies on distorted synthesizers, drum machines and loops rather than the guitars that dominated Lanegan’s previous outings. Experimental though this may be, the spirit of the blues still haunts the record (how’s noir-art-blues for an apt subgenre description?).
Perhaps the finest representation of his newfound blues-electronica fusion is the John Lee Hooker-meets-Tricky “Bleeding Muddy Water,” a mesmerizing mood piece. On “Harborview Hospital”, Lanegan’s desperate voice sounds as though it’s rumbling through a dusty mausoleum, a swirling synth pop melody whisking him along, while the lonely sweep of “Gray Goes Black” is the perfect accompaniment for a moonlight drive. “Ode to Sad Disco,” meanwhile, is exactly what its title suggests, something longtime Lanegan fans (Fanegans?) probably never expected. Somehow, though, he pulls off a disco song with panache.
It’s not all ethereal grooves and dirges, though. Opening track “The Gravedigger’s Song” chugs with the urgency of a flickering live wire, the bass vibrating like a caffeine-riddled heart hidden beneath the floorboards. “Riot in My House” and “Quiver Syndrome” are coming-apart-at-the-seams rockers, while “Deep Black Vanishing Train” is a delicate acoustic number, the most in-line with his previous efforts (though the chords are virtually the same as those of Bubblegum b-side “Mirrored”).
Backing music aside, the star of the piece is, as always, Lanegan’s voice. With each release, the instrument grows richer, its timbre smoother. Lanegan’s apparent cessation of smoking has lent his vocals a new pliability, able to extend into higher ranges (see “Bleeding Muddy Water” and “Phantasmagoria Blues”).
Lyrically, Lanegan doesn’t veer too far from his established gothic impressionism, laden with blues tropes of midnight trains, rabid canids, biblical monsters and celestial floods (“Leviathan waits in the water/Skeletons hide in the trees,” he sings in “Leviathan”). Seldom is Lanegan’s deftness as a lyricist recognized, a shameful practice as the man is truly a poet (and if the album’s title is any indicator, he’s learned from masters of the craft such as W.H. Auden). “Send down the firewalker/Send down the neon priest/Send down the junky doctor/Send down the shadow king,” Lanegan sings on closer “Tiny Grain of Truth,” offering some of the most vivid and equally obtuse imagery the album has to offer. Often labeled his generation’s Johnny Cash due to his voice and persona, it’s just as fitting to consider him the inheritor of Leonard Cohen’s crown. He certainly has the self-deprecating world-weariness to rival Cohen’s own (“If tears were liquor/I’d have drunk myself sick,” he moans in “St Louis Elegy.”)
As with Lanegan’s other solo records, there is no shortage of notable guest appearances. Jack-of-all-trades Alain Johannes serves as the album’s principle architect of instrumentation, while Jack Irons (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eleven, Pearl Jam) holds down the drum kit. Fans of Iron’s innovative style shouldn’t expect much on that front though, as his contributions seem minimal in comparison to the prevalent manufactured beats. Fellow Gutter Twin and perpetual firestorm to Lanegan’s ice floe Greg Dulli lends harmony vocals to “St Louis Elegy,” while reigning Queen of the Stone Age Josh Homme’s guitar playing—as distinctive as Lanegan’s voice—supports “Riot in my House.”
These guest players only serve to support the experimental product of Lanegan’s reinvigorated spirit, symbolized in the cover art’s flowers sprung from the Spinal Tap-block cover of Bubblegum. Funereal though the theme may be, the album has every indication of being the first excerpt of a new chapter in Lanegan’s career.
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