Mark Lanegan is best known as either the frontman to the rock band Screaming Trees or for his solo blues albums that began with The Winding Sheet (Sub Pop, 1990) and perfected on Whiskey for the Holy Ghost (Sub Pop, 1994). The subtle intensity of Lanegan’s drunken wail on his solo albums was slowly diluted through the 90s and 2000s, and remains as a comic aside on Blues Funeral.
Blues Funeral begins with the single “The Gravedigger’s Song” that only has Lanegan’s scratching vocals as a recognizable entity to separate it from being another song from TV on the Radio’s Young Liars. “Bleeding Muddy Water” sounds like Bob Dylan from Time Out of Mind without the haunting atmospheres from Lanois.
“Gray Goes Black”, “Harborview Hospital”, and “Tiny Grain of Truth” would have been boring 80s new wave performed by Dylan and forgotten. “Ode to Sad Disco” could never have succeeded with Lanegan’s low swinging voice trying to compete with “upbeat” disco a ‘la Depeche Mode. “Phantasmagoria Blues” is another 80s themed disco rhythm oddly placed with Lanegan’s voice.
The two rockers, “Riot In My House” and “Quiver Syndrome”, are not nearly as awkward, except for the lame 80s synthesizer and backing vocals in “Quiver”.
The best tracks, the only ones worthy of Lanegan’s haunting vocals, were “St. Louis Elegy” that kept the instrumentation to a minimum and even evoked some of the more eerie moments of the early 90s; “Leviathan” (minus the toy synthesizer/flutes) is a languid ballad that could have gone on the latter half of Whiskey for the Holy Ghost ; and “Deep Black Vanishing Train” is the blues, is the funeral, and is as close to Mark Lanegan as he gets. However, this is the Mark Lanegan Band and not a solo project, though Lanegan wrote and sings all the songs.
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