Mark Lanegan Band - Blues Funeral
The seventh solo album from Mark Lanegan arrives via 4AD Records on February 6th and it’s already causing a stir. We take a listen to Blues Funeral and give you our thoughts on this astonishing record. Read on…
Mark Lanegan is a workaholic. If he isn’t having a folky moment with Isobel Campbell, he’s volunteering some gritty vocals for long time friend and collaborator Greg Dulli’s Twlight Singers, or being one half of the Gutter Twins. Or he’s helping out with Queens Of The Stone Age. Or Soulsavers. Or Unkle. Where he found the time to record his seventh solo album, we’ll never know, but there’s no mistaking the fact that he has used his time well. Blues Funeral is a triumph.
It’s now been some eight years since the last Mark Lanegan Band album, 2004’s highly acclaimed Bubblegum, an album awash with darkness and brooding, veering between contemplation and acceptance. It was desolate and raw, yet a vulnerability permeated the sex and drugs that masked what lay beneath Lanegan’s often bleak lyrics and gloomy outlook. Blues Funeral goes some way to picking up the mantle that has lain hidden and untouched by the various projects Lanegan has been a part of since.
‘The Gravedigger’s Song’ surfaced a couple of months ago or so as a first taster of what to expect from Blues Funeral. As the song opens, the pounding, repetitive bass lane could have been dragged straight from any of the early Queens Of The Stone Age records, it’s punchy, upbeat, guttural; everything QOTSA have ceased to be of late. Further on, as ‘Riot In My House’ progresses, Josh Homme’s distinctive guitar sound, founded on the eponymous debut album and honed across Rated R and Songs For The Deaf, is unmistakeable as he weaves in out around the vocals before finally dominating the song. It’s a stark reminder of how long it is since Homme has managed to work his magic with QOTSA, dereliction of duty to his own band being for the benefit of everyone else he’s worked with recently, from the Arctic Monkeys to Lanegan.
The album is far from a tribute to the occasional ghost of QOTSA however. ‘St Louis Elegy’, driven by a boxy beat and punctuated by haunting feedback, is resplendent in its mourning: ‘If tears were liquor, I’d have drunk myself sick’. As Lanegan’s voice rises, so the organ and guitar follow his lead, creating a swirling, enveloping sensation of the music grabbing and spinning you around in it, as if caught in a whirlpool of sound and texture. It not an assault on the senses, more an insistent caress.
Throughout Blues Funeral, there’s no distinct mood, no overwhelming sense that the record will progress in one obvious, signposted direction, and this is no better evinced than by ‘Ode To Sad Disco’. With a beat and synths that could have been lifted straight from a Goldfrapp track – even down to the ‘Ride a white horse’ lyric – ‘Ode To Sad Disco’ stands out as perhaps the most diverse song on the album. Lanegan’s influence permeates the layers of rising and falling synths rounded off with cleaner, reverb drenched slide guitar, creating a warm, sustained, almost peaceful atmosphere for his vocals to convey their submissive, then hopeful message.
‘Bleeding Muddy Water’ is almost hymnal, a gospel with guitars, a ‘celestial flood’ of feeling. A plea to a loved one not ‘to feel so bad’. It’s almost like a homage to Led Zeppelin’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’, the pounding drums reminiscent to Bonham’s primeval pulse that so energised ‘When The Levee Breaks’ and the theme of rising water overflowing running through the lyrics. The pace is restrained, on the verge of breaking, but resisting the temptation and holding you expectantly in its grasp, almost squeezing the life out of you just waiting and waiting for it to explode, which it never does, like teetering on the edge as the water laps at your feet, then your knees and stops at your shoulders with your head just above the surface gasping for air.
‘Gray Goes Black’ is as moody as the title suggests, the picked guitar over the shuffling drum pattern and Lanegan’s softly growling vocals complimented by a smooth, graceful guitar solo. ‘Phantasmagoria Blues’ is similarly deep, lyrics such as ‘If you found a razor blood and took it to your wrist / I’d be here in my electric chair because of this’ offering an ultimate, irreversible freedom.
‘Quiver Syndrome’ is perhaps the closest on this record that Lanegan goes to his roots with Screaming Trees. The relentless intro chords, thrashed mercilessly on the guitar, cue up the rest of the song to launch itself breathlessly forward. The melody hints at the sixties heydays of the Stones and The Who, but there’s far more to it than that. It’s just good, simple rock n’ roll.
‘Harborview Hospital’, notable in Seattle for being the place where the unfortunate Mother Love Bone vocalist Andrew Wood passed away, his sad demise paving the way for Pearl Jam a year later, is initially reminiscent of label mates The National, but veers away from this obvious comparison as the song becomes populated with jangly guitars and sustained keys. It’s a sad song, full of reflection and cathartic thought, but beautiful in its own way.
‘Leviathan’ is sparse and loosely held together until the drums kick in midway through, the backing vocals nodding at the psychedelic. It’s an organised mess in stark contrast to the intricate construction of the rest of the album. ‘Deep Black Vanishing Train’ harks back more to the early Mark Lanegan solo records ‘Whiskey For The Holy Ghost’ and ‘The Winding Sheet’, being predominantly acoustic until filled in with more guitars and a flute solo. It wouldn’t have been out of place on ether of the side project albums with Isobel Campbell. ‘Tiny Grain Of Truth’ closes the album in jittery, beat driven style. The occasional blast of horns or guitar solo interrupts the scattered beat, finally being completed by the organ that steadies the ship. It’s a level platform from which to finally depart from a record that conjures up so many different feelings and emotions, highs and lows.
Even before it’s released, this record is already a modern day classic. Lanegan’s cultured vision creates something immediately timeless which sits head and shoulders above anything else you are likely to hear this year. To say that Blues Funeral is anything other than an incredible achievement is to be short-sighted at best, idiotic at worst. Mark Lanegan is nothing short of a modern day genius. A simply astonishing record, from an ever astounding artist.
Listen to the record on Mojo’s website here.
