Search Results for:
MARK LANEGAN
Commenting on the reissue Isobel Campbell says: “I have such fond and special memories of writing and producing this album. 'Ballad of The Broken Seas' is so very dear to my heart and Mark is very much missed.” Originally released in 2006, 'Ballad Of The Broken Seas' has remained a touchstone for fans of folk and Americana, revered for its haunting melodies, rich storytelling, and the captivating interplay between Campbell's ethereal vocals and Lanegan's gravelly baritone. The album was the first in a celebrated trilogy of albums that Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan recorded together, being followed by 'Sunday at Devil Dirt' in 2008 and 'Hawk' in 2010. The album garnered widespread acclaim, with the duo being hailed as a modern day Nancy & Lee, and went on to be shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. From the brooding opener 'Deus Ibi Est' to the melancholic 'The False Husband' and the poignant title track, 'Ballad Of The Broken Seas' resonates as powerfully today as it did upon its initial release
TRACK LISTING
1. Deus Ibi Est
2. Black Mountain
3. The False Husband
4. Ballad Of The Broken Seas
5. Revolver
6. Ramblin' Man
7. (Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me?
8. Saturday's Gone
9. It's Hard To Kill A Bad Thing
10. Honey Child What Can I Do?
11. Dusty Wreath
12. The Circus Is Leaving Town
Beggars Arkive in conjunction with the Estate of Mark Lanegan are celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Mark Lanegan’s acclaimed 2004 album 'Bubblegum' with this remastered double LP edition of the original album.
TRACK LISTING
1. When Your Number Isn't Up
2. Hit The City (With PJ Harvey)
3. Wedding Dress
4. Methamphetamine Blues
5. One Hundred Days
6. Bombed
7. Strange Religion
8. Sideways In Reverse
9. Come To Me (With PJ Harvey)
10. Like Little Willie John
11. Can't Come Down
12. Morning Glory Wine
13. Head
14. Driving Death Valley Blues
15. Out Of Nowhere
Beggars Arkive in conjunction with the Estate of Mark Lanegan, are honored to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Mark Lanegan’s acclaimed 2004 album 'Bubblegum' with 'Bubblegum XX'.
The limited-edition 'Bubblegum XX' 4LP box contains a 64-page hardcover book with essays by Troy Van Leewuen, Josh Homme, Chris Goss, Alain Johannes, David Catching, Greg Dulli, Duff McKagan, and Brett Netson along with studio notes and previously unseen photographs by Steve Gullick. It includes 'Bubblegum', which has been cut as a double LP and remastered by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road. It also includes a remastered edition of 'Here Comes That Weird Chill (Methamphetamine Blues, Extras & Oddities)' to which three bonus tracks have been added. The fourth LP contains demos and unreleased tracks, comprised of outtakes from the Bubblegum sessions and tracks recorded, produced and mixed by Troy Van Leeuwen in various hotel rooms with Mark singing and Troy playing all the instruments. The set was executive produced by Mark’s former manager Brian Klein, who worked with him during the 'Bubblegum' era.
The limited-edition 'Bubblegum XX' 4LP box contains a 64-page hardcover book with essays by Troy Van Leewuen, Josh Homme, Chris Goss, Alain Johannes, David Catching, Greg Dulli, Duff McKagan, and Brett Netson along with studio notes and previously unseen photographs by Steve Gullick. It includes 'Bubblegum', which has been cut as a double LP and remastered by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road. It also includes a remastered edition of 'Here Comes That Weird Chill (Methamphetamine Blues, Extras & Oddities)' to which three bonus tracks have been added. The fourth LP contains demos and unreleased tracks, comprised of outtakes from the Bubblegum sessions and tracks recorded, produced and mixed by Troy Van Leeuwen in various hotel rooms with Mark singing and Troy playing all the instruments. The set was executive produced by Mark’s former manager Brian Klein, who worked with him during the 'Bubblegum' era.
TRACK LISTING
4LP Tracklist:
LP1/LP2: Bubblegum:
1. When Your Number Isn't Up
2. Hit The City (with PJ Harvey)
3. Wedding Dress
4. Methamphetamine Blues
5. One Hundred Days
6. Bombed
7. Strange Religion
8. Sideways In Reverse
9. Come To Me (With PJ Harvey)
10. Like Little Willie John
11. Can't Come Down
12. Morning Glory Wine
13. Head
14. Driving Death Valley Blues
15. Out Of Nowhere
LP3: “Here Comes That Weird Chill” (Methamphetamine Blues, Extras & Oddities):
1. Methamphetamine Blues
2. On The Steps Of The Cathedral
3. Clear Spot
4. Message To Mine
5. Lexington Slow Down
6. Skeletal History
7. Wish You Well
8. Sleep With Me
9. Sleep With Me - Version
(Bonus Tracks)
10. Sympathy (Previously Only Available On The Has God Seen My Shadow Anthology)
11. Mirrored (B-side From Hit The City Single)
12. Mud Pink Skag (B-side From Hit The City Single)
LP4: Demos & Unreleased Songs:
1. Heard A Train %
2. Union Tombstone (feat Beck) %
3. Josephine %
4. Kingdom %
5. Soldier %
6. Little Willie John % (Alternate Version Of Like Little Willie John)
7. Blood (Crackers & Honey) %
8. You Wild Colorado # (Johnny Cash Cover)
9. Revolver # (Original Demo)
10. Leaving New River Blues # (Previously Only Available On The Has God Seen My Shadow Anthology As Heaven Is Dry)
11.. St James Infirmary # (Cover)
12. Willie John # (Alternate Version Of Like Little Willie John)
13. Pure Religion # (Alternate Version Of Strange Religion)
% Outtake
# Troy Van Leeuwen Hotel Session
3CD Tracklist:
CD1: Bubblegum:
1. When Your Number Isn't Up
2. Hit The City (with PJ Harvey)
3. Wedding Dress
4. Methamphetamine Blues
5. One Hundred Days
6. Bombed
7. Strange Religion
8. Sideways In Reverse
9. Come To Me (With PJ Harvey)
10. Like Little Willie John
11. Can't Come Down
12. Morning Glory Wine
13. Head
14. Driving Death Valley Blues
15. Out Of Nowhere
CD2: “Here Comes That Weird Chill” (Methamphetamine Blues, Extras & Oddities):
1. Methamphetamine Blues
2. On The Steps Of The Cathedral
3. Clear Spot
4. Message To Mine
5. Lexington Slow Down
6. Skeletal History
7. Wish You Well
8. Sleep With Me
9. Sleep With Me - Version
(Bonus Tracks)
10. Sympathy (Previously Only Available On The Has God Seen My Shadow Anthology)
11. Mirrored (B-side From Hit The City Single)
12. Mud Pink Skag (B-side From Hit The City Single)
CD3: Demos & Unreleased Songs:
1. Heard A Train %
2. Union Tombstone (feat Beck) %
3. Josephine %
4. Kingdom %
5. Soldier %
6. Little Willie John % (Alternate Version Of Like Little Willie John)
7. Blood (Crackers & Honey) %
8. You Wild Colorado # (Johnny Cash Cover)
9. Revolver # (Original Demo)
10. Leaving New River Blues # (Previously Only Available On The Has God Seen My Shadow Anthology As Heaven Is Dry)
11. St James Infirmary # (Cover)
12. Willie John # (Alternate Version Of Like Little Willie John)
13. Pure Religion # (Alternate Version Of Strange Religion)
% Outtake
# Troy Van Leeuwen Hotel Session
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER"Mark Lanegan-primitive, brutal, and apocalyptic. What's not to love?" NICK CAVE"A stoned cold classic" IAN RANKIN'Mark Lanegan writes like he sings, from the pained heart of a damaged soul with brutal honesty' BOBBY GILLESPIE"Powerfully written and brutally, frighteningly honest" LUCINDA WILLIAMSA ROUGH TRADE AND MOJO BOOK OF THE YEARFrom the back of the van to the front of the bar, from the hotel room to the emergency room, Mark Lanegan takes us back to the sinister, needle-ridden streets of Seattle, to an alternative music scene that was simultaneously bursting with creativity and saturated with drugs. He tracks the tumultuous rise and fall of Screaming Trees, from a brawling, acid-rock bar band to world-famous festival favourites with an enduring legacy, and tells of his own personal struggles with addiction, culminating in homelessness, petty crime, and the tragic deaths of his closest friends.
Gritty, gripping and unflinchingly raw, SING BACKWARDS AND WEEP is about a man who learned how to drag himself from the wreckage, dust off the ashes, and keep living and creating. 'The most brutally honest rock memoir imaginable' DAILY TELEGRAPH
Gritty, gripping and unflinchingly raw, SING BACKWARDS AND WEEP is about a man who learned how to drag himself from the wreckage, dust off the ashes, and keep living and creating. 'The most brutally honest rock memoir imaginable' DAILY TELEGRAPH
One morning in March 2021 with the second wave of infections ripping through Ireland where he was newly resident, Mark Lanegan woke up breathless, fatigued beyond belief, his body burdened with a gigantic dose of Covid-19. Admitted to Kerry Hospital and initially given little hope of survival, Lanegan's illness has him slipping in and out of a coma, unable to walk or function for several months and fearing for his life. As his situation becomes more intolerable over the course of that bleakest of springs he is assaulted by nightmares, visions and regrets about a life lived on the edge of chaos and disorder.
He is prompted to consider his predicament and how, in his sixth decade, his lifelong battle with mortality has led to this final banal encounter with a disease that has undone millions, when he has apparently been cheating death for his whole existence. Written in vignettes of prose and poetry, DEVIL IN A COMA is a terrifying account of illness and the remorse that comes with it by an artist and writer with singular vision.
He is prompted to consider his predicament and how, in his sixth decade, his lifelong battle with mortality has led to this final banal encounter with a disease that has undone millions, when he has apparently been cheating death for his whole existence. Written in vignettes of prose and poetry, DEVIL IN A COMA is a terrifying account of illness and the remorse that comes with it by an artist and writer with singular vision.
When considering any great work of art, be it a painting, a novel, or a piece of music, it’s natural to wonder what might have inspired it: ‘the story behind the song’. Mark Lanegan’s new album, Straight Songs Of Sorrow, flips that equation. Here are 15 songs inspired by a story: his life story, as documented by his own hand in his new memoir, Sing Backwards And Weep.
The book is a brutal, nerve-shredding read, thanks to Lanegan’s unsparing candour in recounting a journey from troubled youth in eastern Washington, through his drug-stained existence amid the ’90s Seattle rock scene, to an unlikely salvation at the dawn of the 21st century. There’s death and tragedy, yet also humour and hope, thanks to the tenacity which impels its host, even at his lowest moments. As Lanegan writes near the end: “I was the ghost that wouldn’t die.”
Today, Lanegan is a renowned songwriter and a much-coveted collaborator, as adept at electronica as with rock, constantly honing his indomitable voice: an asphalt-laced linctus for the soul. While the memoir documents a struggle to find peace with himself, his new album emphasis the extent to which he came to realise that music is his life.
“Writing the book, I didn’t get catharsis,” he chuckles. “All I got was a Pandora’s box full of pain and misery. I went way in, and remembered shit I’d put away 20 years ago. But I started writing these songs the minute I was done, and I realised there was a depth of emotion because they were all linked to memories from this book. It was a relief to suddenly go back to music. Then I realised that was the gift of the book: these songs. I’m really proud of this record.”
Straight Songs Of Sorrow combines musical trace elements from early Mark Lanegan albums with the synthesized constructs of later work. The meditative acoustic guitar fingerpicking – provided by Lamb Of God’s Mark Morton – on Apples From A Tree and Hanging On (For DRC) echo 1994’s Whiskey For The Holy Ghost. Yet one of that record’s touchstones was Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, echoed in the new album’s opener I Wouldn’t Want To Say, where Lanegan extemporises *à la Ballerina over musique concrète wave patterns generated by his latest favourite compositional tool, a miniature computer-synth called the Organelle. The lyric clings onto the music, emulating his book’s queasy momentum: *“Swinging from death… to revival.”
“That song is the explanation, the beginning and middle and end of that entire period of time,” Mark says. “The encapsulation of the entire experience, book and record. So I started with that.”
Lanegan affirms that every song references a specific episode or person in the book, albeit some more explicitly than others. Hanging On (For DRC) is a loving ode to his friend Dylan Carlson, genius progenitor of drone metal and a fellow unlikely survivor of Seattle’s narcotic dramas. “I was always unhappy, and he was the guy who was always smiling, even through my crazy schemes that eventually got both of us into a lot of trouble.” The richly cinematic mood of Daylight In The Nocturnal House, meanwhile, paints a more impressionistic scene: factory smoke, rain, a phone call from *“somebody’s grand-daughter”, who’ll *“pay to make somebody crawl/And send you to heaven.” The singer’s perspective is ambiguous. “I got into a lot of shady business in those years,” Lanegan says.
Longtime observers will recognise some familiar recurrent themes. Death. Destruction. Bad behaviour. In the case of At Zero Below, all in the same song. “Yes, I did burn someone with a cigarette,” Mark says. “Yes, I did spit in somebody’s face – maybe more than once in my life. Stuff I’m not proud of. That song is also about one of my many ex-girlfriends who is no longer with us. It’s all linked to the book.”
At Zero Below features two of the album’s many stellar guests. Singing admonitory harmonies with himself is Greg Dulli, another ’90s alt-rock veteran, Lanegan’s erstwhile partner in mischief and fellow Gutter Twin. The song’s incantatory fiddle is played by The Bad Seeds’ Warren Ellis. No lesser figure than Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones provides Mellotron on the serpentine Ballad Of A Dying Rover (*“I’m just a sick sick man/My days are numbered”). Aside from mandolin, all Daylight In The Nocturnal House’s cobwebbed atmospherics are by Portishead’s Adrian Utley. Ed Harcourt is Lanegan’s pick for album MVP (“He’s all over it – everything that he plays, piano or Wurlitzer, becomes magical”), with special mention to bassist Jack Bates, son of Peter Hook; that duo make especially distinctive contributions to Churchbells, Ghosts a bleakly humorous lament to the drudgery of life on the road (*“I’d ask somebody for a quarter/If there were someone for me to phone”).
Ketamine is a numb blues, with Lanegan shadowed by Cold Cave vocalist Wesley Eisold, who inspired the album’s only overt drug song (ironically, about a drug that Lanegan has never actually taken). “Wes is good friends with Genesis P-Orridge,” explains Mark, “and he said the last time he saw Gen she was in a hospital bed, saying to this priest, ‘No thank you sir, I don’t need any last rites, but if you have any ketamine that would be perfect.’” He laughs. “So I immediately wrote that song and had him sing on it. There’s drugs throughout the record – they’re rife in Bleed All Over – but that song was the only real specific one.”
The material on the last two Mark Lanegan Band albums had Lanegan’s words set to music by various other sources. But aside from the Mark Morton collaborations, Straight Songs Of Sorrow was built from the ground up by Lanegan alone, aided by producer Alain Johannes, his longtime consigliere. Only two other songs have shared credits, and even these stay in-house: Burying Ground and Eden Lost And Found were co-written by Mark’s wife Shelley Brien, with whom he also duets on the Rita Coolidge/Kris Kristofferson-style ballad This Game Of Love. “Let’s put it this way,” says Mark. “Every girlfriend I’ve ever had, for any amount of time, left me. All the good ones left me! Until my current wife. It was great to sing that with Shelley, it really shows she’s a great singer. And it has a depth of emotion that I’m not used to. This is a more honest record than I’ve probably ever made.”
A crushing twin-song centrepiece proves that. First, Stockholm City Blues, a sparse, beautiful, strings and finger-picking meditation on the remorse code of addiction (*“I pay for this pain I put into my blood”). Then, the seven-minute epic Skeleton Key, a supplicatory confessional (“I’m ugly inside and out there is no denying”) that also provides the album title. It’s a remarkable performance from a man whose punishment for plumbing the depths was simply to continue further along the road. “My wife called that my ‘redemption song’,” says Lanegan.
And indeed, there is a happy ending to this story. Just as his book closes with the hero overcoming adversity and turning, battered but cleansed, towards a new day, so Straight Songs Of Sorrow closes with Eden Lost And Found. *“Sunrise coming up baby/To burn the dirt right off of me,” marvels Lanegan, with his words echoed by Simon Bonney of Crime & The City Solution, an all-time hero. “I wanted to make a positive song to end this record, because that’s the way the book ended,” Mark says. “And what’s more positive than to have your favourite singer sing with you?”
Straight Songs Of Sorrow feels both definitive and unique, a culmination of its creator’s arc yet also indicative of the energy that drives him onto future horizons. No wonder Lanegan is proud.
“I do feel this is something special for me, something honest,” he says. “’Cos records are not real life, man – in case no one told ya. They’re just a fake version of life!” Mark Lanegan laughs. “Well, at least you have one now that’s a little closer to being real. Unfortunately, it’s by me.”
Keith Cameron.
The book is a brutal, nerve-shredding read, thanks to Lanegan’s unsparing candour in recounting a journey from troubled youth in eastern Washington, through his drug-stained existence amid the ’90s Seattle rock scene, to an unlikely salvation at the dawn of the 21st century. There’s death and tragedy, yet also humour and hope, thanks to the tenacity which impels its host, even at his lowest moments. As Lanegan writes near the end: “I was the ghost that wouldn’t die.”
Today, Lanegan is a renowned songwriter and a much-coveted collaborator, as adept at electronica as with rock, constantly honing his indomitable voice: an asphalt-laced linctus for the soul. While the memoir documents a struggle to find peace with himself, his new album emphasis the extent to which he came to realise that music is his life.
“Writing the book, I didn’t get catharsis,” he chuckles. “All I got was a Pandora’s box full of pain and misery. I went way in, and remembered shit I’d put away 20 years ago. But I started writing these songs the minute I was done, and I realised there was a depth of emotion because they were all linked to memories from this book. It was a relief to suddenly go back to music. Then I realised that was the gift of the book: these songs. I’m really proud of this record.”
Straight Songs Of Sorrow combines musical trace elements from early Mark Lanegan albums with the synthesized constructs of later work. The meditative acoustic guitar fingerpicking – provided by Lamb Of God’s Mark Morton – on Apples From A Tree and Hanging On (For DRC) echo 1994’s Whiskey For The Holy Ghost. Yet one of that record’s touchstones was Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, echoed in the new album’s opener I Wouldn’t Want To Say, where Lanegan extemporises *à la Ballerina over musique concrète wave patterns generated by his latest favourite compositional tool, a miniature computer-synth called the Organelle. The lyric clings onto the music, emulating his book’s queasy momentum: *“Swinging from death… to revival.”
“That song is the explanation, the beginning and middle and end of that entire period of time,” Mark says. “The encapsulation of the entire experience, book and record. So I started with that.”
Lanegan affirms that every song references a specific episode or person in the book, albeit some more explicitly than others. Hanging On (For DRC) is a loving ode to his friend Dylan Carlson, genius progenitor of drone metal and a fellow unlikely survivor of Seattle’s narcotic dramas. “I was always unhappy, and he was the guy who was always smiling, even through my crazy schemes that eventually got both of us into a lot of trouble.” The richly cinematic mood of Daylight In The Nocturnal House, meanwhile, paints a more impressionistic scene: factory smoke, rain, a phone call from *“somebody’s grand-daughter”, who’ll *“pay to make somebody crawl/And send you to heaven.” The singer’s perspective is ambiguous. “I got into a lot of shady business in those years,” Lanegan says.
Longtime observers will recognise some familiar recurrent themes. Death. Destruction. Bad behaviour. In the case of At Zero Below, all in the same song. “Yes, I did burn someone with a cigarette,” Mark says. “Yes, I did spit in somebody’s face – maybe more than once in my life. Stuff I’m not proud of. That song is also about one of my many ex-girlfriends who is no longer with us. It’s all linked to the book.”
At Zero Below features two of the album’s many stellar guests. Singing admonitory harmonies with himself is Greg Dulli, another ’90s alt-rock veteran, Lanegan’s erstwhile partner in mischief and fellow Gutter Twin. The song’s incantatory fiddle is played by The Bad Seeds’ Warren Ellis. No lesser figure than Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones provides Mellotron on the serpentine Ballad Of A Dying Rover (*“I’m just a sick sick man/My days are numbered”). Aside from mandolin, all Daylight In The Nocturnal House’s cobwebbed atmospherics are by Portishead’s Adrian Utley. Ed Harcourt is Lanegan’s pick for album MVP (“He’s all over it – everything that he plays, piano or Wurlitzer, becomes magical”), with special mention to bassist Jack Bates, son of Peter Hook; that duo make especially distinctive contributions to Churchbells, Ghosts a bleakly humorous lament to the drudgery of life on the road (*“I’d ask somebody for a quarter/If there were someone for me to phone”).
Ketamine is a numb blues, with Lanegan shadowed by Cold Cave vocalist Wesley Eisold, who inspired the album’s only overt drug song (ironically, about a drug that Lanegan has never actually taken). “Wes is good friends with Genesis P-Orridge,” explains Mark, “and he said the last time he saw Gen she was in a hospital bed, saying to this priest, ‘No thank you sir, I don’t need any last rites, but if you have any ketamine that would be perfect.’” He laughs. “So I immediately wrote that song and had him sing on it. There’s drugs throughout the record – they’re rife in Bleed All Over – but that song was the only real specific one.”
The material on the last two Mark Lanegan Band albums had Lanegan’s words set to music by various other sources. But aside from the Mark Morton collaborations, Straight Songs Of Sorrow was built from the ground up by Lanegan alone, aided by producer Alain Johannes, his longtime consigliere. Only two other songs have shared credits, and even these stay in-house: Burying Ground and Eden Lost And Found were co-written by Mark’s wife Shelley Brien, with whom he also duets on the Rita Coolidge/Kris Kristofferson-style ballad This Game Of Love. “Let’s put it this way,” says Mark. “Every girlfriend I’ve ever had, for any amount of time, left me. All the good ones left me! Until my current wife. It was great to sing that with Shelley, it really shows she’s a great singer. And it has a depth of emotion that I’m not used to. This is a more honest record than I’ve probably ever made.”
A crushing twin-song centrepiece proves that. First, Stockholm City Blues, a sparse, beautiful, strings and finger-picking meditation on the remorse code of addiction (*“I pay for this pain I put into my blood”). Then, the seven-minute epic Skeleton Key, a supplicatory confessional (“I’m ugly inside and out there is no denying”) that also provides the album title. It’s a remarkable performance from a man whose punishment for plumbing the depths was simply to continue further along the road. “My wife called that my ‘redemption song’,” says Lanegan.
And indeed, there is a happy ending to this story. Just as his book closes with the hero overcoming adversity and turning, battered but cleansed, towards a new day, so Straight Songs Of Sorrow closes with Eden Lost And Found. *“Sunrise coming up baby/To burn the dirt right off of me,” marvels Lanegan, with his words echoed by Simon Bonney of Crime & The City Solution, an all-time hero. “I wanted to make a positive song to end this record, because that’s the way the book ended,” Mark says. “And what’s more positive than to have your favourite singer sing with you?”
Straight Songs Of Sorrow feels both definitive and unique, a culmination of its creator’s arc yet also indicative of the energy that drives him onto future horizons. No wonder Lanegan is proud.
“I do feel this is something special for me, something honest,” he says. “’Cos records are not real life, man – in case no one told ya. They’re just a fake version of life!” Mark Lanegan laughs. “Well, at least you have one now that’s a little closer to being real. Unfortunately, it’s by me.”
Keith Cameron.
TRACK LISTING
1. I Wouldn't Want To Say
2. Apples From A Tree
3. This Game Of Love
4. Ketamine
5. Bleed All Over
6. Churchbells, Ghosts
7. Internal Hourglass Discussion
8. Stockholm City Blues
9. Skeleton Key
10. Daylight In The Nocturnal House
11. Ballad Of A Dying Rover
12. Hanging On (For DRC)
13. Burying Ground
14. At Zero Below
15. Eden Lost And Found
Over the last decade, Lanegan and Garwood have worked in tangent on 2013’s Black Pudding as well as on Lanegan’s solo records (Garwood contributed to 2012’s Blues Funeral and 2017’s Gargoyle after which he toured as part of Lanegan’s band). Writing and recording was split between studio collaboration and sharing music between Garwood’s home in London and Lanegan’s in Los Angeles. Elsewhere, technology helped make the duo’s transatlantic working relationships relatively easy.
“Over the years, we’ve recorded together and apart. This time, I started this record alone, with many animals as company,” says Garwood. “It flowed, I set to work and out it came. Our music is instinct, there is not much talking about it, just creating. I think that if you are at peace with your work, and feeling it right, it flows, and can feel ‘easy’. Music isn't meant to be hard. Though sometimes it can burn you to ashes. Making music for a singer, so they can inhabit it with a song means hitting the right soul buttons. There is no hit without a miss. It is a healing record, for us the makers, and for the listeners. It grows natural. We are gardeners of sonic feelings.”
While Black Pudding put Garwood’s mercurial guitar centre stage, With Animals is constructed from a different set of tools. Analogue and dust flecked, it sounds like Lanegan and Garwood have been holed up in a ’60s recording studio while the apocalypse rages outside. Tracks sit on loops that sounds like they’re straight out of There’s A Riot Goin’ On while sparse melodies nod in the direction of British electronic producers like Burial or Boards of Canada. Which is not to say it sounds like any of those things – this is a weird world all of their own design.
The record’s 12 songs are spectral and sinewy, often defined by the spaces in between the sounds. A ghost’s whistle weaves itself around a pulsing single note on Lonesome Infidel; Feast to Famine’s hard luck story floats above a guitar part so strung out and washed with distortion it’s become barely recognisable. It’s soul music for anyone who’s long since left the crossroads.
“Over the years, we’ve recorded together and apart. This time, I started this record alone, with many animals as company,” says Garwood. “It flowed, I set to work and out it came. Our music is instinct, there is not much talking about it, just creating. I think that if you are at peace with your work, and feeling it right, it flows, and can feel ‘easy’. Music isn't meant to be hard. Though sometimes it can burn you to ashes. Making music for a singer, so they can inhabit it with a song means hitting the right soul buttons. There is no hit without a miss. It is a healing record, for us the makers, and for the listeners. It grows natural. We are gardeners of sonic feelings.”
While Black Pudding put Garwood’s mercurial guitar centre stage, With Animals is constructed from a different set of tools. Analogue and dust flecked, it sounds like Lanegan and Garwood have been holed up in a ’60s recording studio while the apocalypse rages outside. Tracks sit on loops that sounds like they’re straight out of There’s A Riot Goin’ On while sparse melodies nod in the direction of British electronic producers like Burial or Boards of Canada. Which is not to say it sounds like any of those things – this is a weird world all of their own design.
The record’s 12 songs are spectral and sinewy, often defined by the spaces in between the sounds. A ghost’s whistle weaves itself around a pulsing single note on Lonesome Infidel; Feast to Famine’s hard luck story floats above a guitar part so strung out and washed with distortion it’s become barely recognisable. It’s soul music for anyone who’s long since left the crossroads.
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: Brimming with morose energy and perfectly measured songwriting, an album from these two veterans was never going to be anything but mindblowing, and here we have it. Lanegan and Garwood have managed to meet perfectly in the dark ether between their two styles and 'With Animals' is every bit the perfect fusion.TRACK LISTING
1 Save Me
2 Feast To Famine
3 My Shadow Life
4 Upon Doing Something Wrong
5 L.A Blue
6 Scarlett
7 Lonesome Infidel
8 With Animals
9 Ghost Stories
10 Spaceman
11 One Way Glass
12 Desert Song
There’s a singer with a voice 50 fathoms deep and the consistency of vitrified teak, who has been known to go to extremes in search of a song. Across continents, over oceans, through multiple time zones. From West Hollywood to... Tunbridge Wells. A long way – but Mark Lanegan knows the directions.
Early in 2016, Mark was at home in Los Angeles, working on some ideas for what might turn into his next album. He wasn’t too thrilled by what he was coming up with. Then he got an email from a friend, an English musician named Rob Marshall, thanking Mark for contributing to a new project he was putting together, Humanist. The pair first met in 2008, when Marshall’s former band Exit Calm supported Soulsavers, who Mark was singing with at the time. Now Rob was offering to write Mark some music to return the favour.
“I was like, Hey man, I’m getting ready to make a record, if you’ve got anything?’” Mark recalls. “Three days later he sent me *10 things… !”
In the meantime, Mark had written Blue Blue Sea, a rippling mood piece that he thought might be a more fruitful direction for his new record, and had the idea for a song called First Day Of Winter that felt like an apt closer. “It’s almost always how my records start,” he explains. “I let the first couple of songs tell me what the next couple should sound like, and it’s really the same process when I’m writing words. Whatever my first couple of lines are tell me what the next couple should be. I’ve always built things like that, sort of like making a sculpture I guess. Start with the raw material and let that point me in the direction I want to go. So, once I was pointed in that direction, the music that came from other sources, from Rob, I just went for the ones that helped me build this narrative that I had started already.”
Within an hour, Mark had written words and vocal lines for two of the pieces Rob had cooked up at Mount Sion Studios in Kent and pinged through the virtual clouds to California. Rob's music fitted perfectly with the direction Mark had been pondering: in essence, a more expansive progression from the moody Krautrock-influenced electronica textures of his two previous albums, Blues Funeral and Phantom Radio. Eventually, Rob Marshall would co-write six of the songs on the new Mark Lanegan Band album. “I was very thankful to become reacquainted with him,” Mark deadpans.
The remainder of the album was written, recorded and produced by Lanegan's longtime musical amanuensis Alain Johannes at his 11 AD base in West Hollywood. Everything was done and dusted within a month, unusually fast by Lanegan’s recent standards. Both Blues Funeral and Phantom Radio unfurled at leisurely pace over several months. But this time Johannes had only a fixed window of opportunity due to his ongoing touring commitments as a member of P.J. Harvey’s band. But Mark was sufficiently happy with the material to move swiftly, a reflection of contentment with his abilities as a singer and writer, which have now produced a huge body of work spanning a period of more than 30 years: whether it be his own solo records, or collaborative recordings with others, or going back to his legendary first band, the Screaming Trees.
Early in 2016, Mark was at home in Los Angeles, working on some ideas for what might turn into his next album. He wasn’t too thrilled by what he was coming up with. Then he got an email from a friend, an English musician named Rob Marshall, thanking Mark for contributing to a new project he was putting together, Humanist. The pair first met in 2008, when Marshall’s former band Exit Calm supported Soulsavers, who Mark was singing with at the time. Now Rob was offering to write Mark some music to return the favour.
“I was like, Hey man, I’m getting ready to make a record, if you’ve got anything?’” Mark recalls. “Three days later he sent me *10 things… !”
In the meantime, Mark had written Blue Blue Sea, a rippling mood piece that he thought might be a more fruitful direction for his new record, and had the idea for a song called First Day Of Winter that felt like an apt closer. “It’s almost always how my records start,” he explains. “I let the first couple of songs tell me what the next couple should sound like, and it’s really the same process when I’m writing words. Whatever my first couple of lines are tell me what the next couple should be. I’ve always built things like that, sort of like making a sculpture I guess. Start with the raw material and let that point me in the direction I want to go. So, once I was pointed in that direction, the music that came from other sources, from Rob, I just went for the ones that helped me build this narrative that I had started already.”
Within an hour, Mark had written words and vocal lines for two of the pieces Rob had cooked up at Mount Sion Studios in Kent and pinged through the virtual clouds to California. Rob's music fitted perfectly with the direction Mark had been pondering: in essence, a more expansive progression from the moody Krautrock-influenced electronica textures of his two previous albums, Blues Funeral and Phantom Radio. Eventually, Rob Marshall would co-write six of the songs on the new Mark Lanegan Band album. “I was very thankful to become reacquainted with him,” Mark deadpans.
The remainder of the album was written, recorded and produced by Lanegan's longtime musical amanuensis Alain Johannes at his 11 AD base in West Hollywood. Everything was done and dusted within a month, unusually fast by Lanegan’s recent standards. Both Blues Funeral and Phantom Radio unfurled at leisurely pace over several months. But this time Johannes had only a fixed window of opportunity due to his ongoing touring commitments as a member of P.J. Harvey’s band. But Mark was sufficiently happy with the material to move swiftly, a reflection of contentment with his abilities as a singer and writer, which have now produced a huge body of work spanning a period of more than 30 years: whether it be his own solo records, or collaborative recordings with others, or going back to his legendary first band, the Screaming Trees.
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: Lanegan and band do it once again with this, the brilliant 'Gargoyle'. A more upbeat outlook than previous iterations, channelling the spirit of 60's psychedelia, stadium rock, downbeat folky moments and good ol fashioned songwriting talent. Brilliant.TRACK LISTING
Death’s Head Tattoo
Nocturne
Blue Blue Sea
Beehive
Sister
Emperpor
Goodbye To Beauty
Drunk On Destruction
First Day Of Winter
Old Swan
Mark Lanegan first rose to fame with his band the Screaming Trees in the '90s. Like other noted artists Lanegan has carved out a strong identity of his own as a vocalist and songwriter informed by the blues but willing to take his darkly poetic sensibility wherever his muse was pointing him, from hard rock to electronica.
At the time, The Screaming Trees had recently disbanded and Lanegan was in the early years of his solo offerings (at this point he had released a mere five solo albums). The songs on Houston (Publishing Demos 2002), were written, recorded, then shelved until now, with the release of this12-song collection of previously unreleased demos via Ipecac.
Justice Records' Randall Jamail produced the album. Art was done by The Mekons' Jon Langford.
At the time, The Screaming Trees had recently disbanded and Lanegan was in the early years of his solo offerings (at this point he had released a mere five solo albums). The songs on Houston (Publishing Demos 2002), were written, recorded, then shelved until now, with the release of this12-song collection of previously unreleased demos via Ipecac.
Justice Records' Randall Jamail produced the album. Art was done by The Mekons' Jon Langford.
TRACK LISTING
1. No Cross
2. Two Horses
3. When It's In You (Methamphetamine Blues)
4. High Life
5. I'll Go Where You Send Me
6. Grey Goes Black
7. The Primitives
8. Blind
9. Halcyon Daze
10. Nothing Much To Mention
11. A Suite For Dying Love
12. Way To Tomorrow
Lanegan's chief compositional tool on Phantom Radio was his phone – specifically an app called Funk Box. “I didn’t bother to hook up my 909 and 808 this time,” he says, “because the app had ’em. I’d write drum parts with it then add music with the synthesizer or the guitar.” The album grew organically from these synthetic roots, taking in Mark’s ongoing love of Krautrock and also an ’80s new wave show on Sirius satellite radio, his favoured aural companion as he drives around Los Angeles. “They have a few good shows but the ‘80s one in particular I like,” he says. “That’s the music that was happening when I started making music. And although the Trees drew on Nuggets psychedelia, 13th Floor Elevators and Love, we were actually listening to Echo And The Bunnymen, Rain Parade, the Gun Club. A lot of British post-punk. We loved that stuff. I just waited until I was in my late forties before I started ripping it off.”
Lanegan’s generous collaborative spirit sees him deliver an excellent co-write with British guitarist Duke Garwood, with whom he made last year’s dustbowl-desolate Black Pudding, and who now offers the music for I Am The Wolf, a Lanegan signature tune. Mark’s favourite song on the album, meanwhile, is Torn Red Heart, an intensely tender meditation for a broken heart that’s like The Velvet Underground’s Pale Blue Eyes orchestrated by Angelo Badalamenti. He also has a special mention for Floor Of The Ocean, which balances sheer catchiness with a deceptively bleak lyrical reflection on a life lived on the hard shoulder: “Clear eyes, can’t avoid the searchlight/Hope that they don’t find me/Find me where I’m lying.”
Lanegan’s generous collaborative spirit sees him deliver an excellent co-write with British guitarist Duke Garwood, with whom he made last year’s dustbowl-desolate Black Pudding, and who now offers the music for I Am The Wolf, a Lanegan signature tune. Mark’s favourite song on the album, meanwhile, is Torn Red Heart, an intensely tender meditation for a broken heart that’s like The Velvet Underground’s Pale Blue Eyes orchestrated by Angelo Badalamenti. He also has a special mention for Floor Of The Ocean, which balances sheer catchiness with a deceptively bleak lyrical reflection on a life lived on the hard shoulder: “Clear eyes, can’t avoid the searchlight/Hope that they don’t find me/Find me where I’m lying.”
TRACK LISTING
1. Harvest Home
2. Judgement Time
3. Floor Of The Ocean
4. The Killing Season
5. Seventh Day
6. I Am The Wolf
7. Torn Red Heart
8. Waltzing In Blue
9. The Wild People
10. Death Trip To Tulsa
Mark Lanegan has teamed up with multi-instrumentalist Duke Garwood to release Black Pudding via Heavenly Recordings.
Lanegan, never one to shy away from unique collaborations, has previously worked with Isobel Campbell, Greg Dulli and as a member of The Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age and Soulsavers. "Duke Garwood is one of my all time favorite artists," said Lanegan. "Working with him has been one of the best experiences of my recording life." Lanegan and Garwood met a few years ago while playing on the same bill and Garwood was a frequent opener on Lanegan's recent European tour.
Garwood has often been described in the press as Lanegan's "spiritual cousin across the Atlantic waters." He has been widely praised as a master bluesman, with The Quietus saying "The combination of Garwood's murmured vocals and the sound he gets out of his guitar - which ranges from a rolling, loose finger-picking to shuddering howls of feedback - has a hypnotic effect" and The Mirror dubbing him as "London's leading exponent of the wheezy broke-down blues."
Black Pudding was recorded at Pink Duck Studios in Burbank, California by Justin Smith (Tegan & Sara, The Hives) and mixed by his Queens of the Stone Age associate Alain Johannes.
Lanegan, never one to shy away from unique collaborations, has previously worked with Isobel Campbell, Greg Dulli and as a member of The Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age and Soulsavers. "Duke Garwood is one of my all time favorite artists," said Lanegan. "Working with him has been one of the best experiences of my recording life." Lanegan and Garwood met a few years ago while playing on the same bill and Garwood was a frequent opener on Lanegan's recent European tour.
Garwood has often been described in the press as Lanegan's "spiritual cousin across the Atlantic waters." He has been widely praised as a master bluesman, with The Quietus saying "The combination of Garwood's murmured vocals and the sound he gets out of his guitar - which ranges from a rolling, loose finger-picking to shuddering howls of feedback - has a hypnotic effect" and The Mirror dubbing him as "London's leading exponent of the wheezy broke-down blues."
Black Pudding was recorded at Pink Duck Studios in Burbank, California by Justin Smith (Tegan & Sara, The Hives) and mixed by his Queens of the Stone Age associate Alain Johannes.
‘Blues Funeral’ is the new Mark Lanegan Band record, the first since 2004’s ‘Bubblegum’, recorded in Hollywood, California by Alain Johannes at his 11ad studio. In the mean time, he’s been busy working with the likes of Isobel Campbell, Twilight Singers, Gutter Twins and Soulsavers. Here, the music was played by Johannes and Jack Irons with appearances from Greg Dulli, Josh Homme et al.
The awesome ‘Gravedigger’s Song’ kicks things off, with it’s pounding, claustrophobic beats. The tempo slows for the next track ‘Bleeding Muddy Water’, with it’s soulful, pulsing groove. In fact, the whole album ‘grooves’ to varying degrees, from slow and soulful, to Kraut-ish metronomy, to almost funky – yes really! There’s a lot going on here, and it’s taken me a good few listens to get to grips with it, but as ever, Mark’s dark tales, delivered in his distinctive gravelly tones have won me over.
The awesome ‘Gravedigger’s Song’ kicks things off, with it’s pounding, claustrophobic beats. The tempo slows for the next track ‘Bleeding Muddy Water’, with it’s soulful, pulsing groove. In fact, the whole album ‘grooves’ to varying degrees, from slow and soulful, to Kraut-ish metronomy, to almost funky – yes really! There’s a lot going on here, and it’s taken me a good few listens to get to grips with it, but as ever, Mark’s dark tales, delivered in his distinctive gravelly tones have won me over.
TRACK LISTING
1. The Gravedigger’s Song
2. Bleeding Muddy Water
3. Gray Goes Black
4. St. Louis Elegy
5. Riot In My House
6. Ode To Sad Disco
7. Phantasmagoria Blues
8. Quiver Syndrome
9. Harborview Hospital
10. Leviathan
11. Deep Black Vanishing Train
12. Tiny Grain Of Truth
‘Whiskey For The Holy Ghost’ is the second solo album from Mark Lanegan, originally released in 1994.
The album builds upon the roots-music foundation Lanegan established with his debut ‘The Winding Sheet’.
Released during the grunge explosion of the early 1990s, ‘Whiskey For The Holy Ghost’ showcases Lanegan’s growing maturity as a songwriter and vocalist. Lyrically, Lanegan continues to delve into the darker side of the human experience on songs like ‘Borracho’ and the biblical ‘Pendulum’.
Dan Peters of Mudhoney guests on the album, playing drums on the songs ‘Borracho’ and ‘House A Home’.
The album builds upon the roots-music foundation Lanegan established with his debut ‘The Winding Sheet’.
Released during the grunge explosion of the early 1990s, ‘Whiskey For The Holy Ghost’ showcases Lanegan’s growing maturity as a songwriter and vocalist. Lyrically, Lanegan continues to delve into the darker side of the human experience on songs like ‘Borracho’ and the biblical ‘Pendulum’.
Dan Peters of Mudhoney guests on the album, playing drums on the songs ‘Borracho’ and ‘House A Home’.
TRACK LISTING
The River Rise
Borracho
House A Home
Kingdoms Of Rain
Carnival
Riding The Nightmare
El Sol
Dead On You
Shooting Gallery
Sunrise
Pendulum
Judas Touch
Beggar’s Blues
‘Scraps At Midnight’ is the third solo album by Mark Lanegan. It was produced by Mark Lanegan and longtime collaborator Mike Johnson. ‘Scraps At Midnight’ could arguably be considered the final instalment of a trilogy of albums (preceded by ‘The Winding Sheet’ and ‘Whiskey For The Holy Ghost’) which feature the songwriter’s interpretation of American roots music set to troubling lyrics that explore themes of loss, sin and redemption.
TRACK LISTING
Hospital Roll Call
Hotel
Stay
Bell Black Ocean
Last One In The World
Praying Ground
Wheels
Waiting On A Train
Day & Night
Because Of This
‘I’ll Take Care Of You’ is the fourth solo album by former Screaming Trees vocalist Mark Lanegan. It features Lanegan’s interpretation of songs from a wide variety of songwriters, including Tim Rose, Tim Hardin, Booker T. Jones and Buck Owens. ‘I’ll Take Care Of You’ also includes the traditional song ‘Little Sadie’.
Featuring 15 original tracks and boasting some stunning guest appearances, "Bubblegum" is simply one of Mark Lanegan's (Screaming Trees singer and Queens Of The Stone Age member) best albums, a stunning dark americana journey full of tales of remorse and loneliness delivered by his unique and emotive gravel-edged voice. Musical assistance on "Bubblegum" comes from luminaries including Queens Of The Stone Age bandmates Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri, PJ Harvey (who provides vocals on "Hit The City" and "Come To Me"), Afghan Whigs and Twilight Singers' Greg Dulli and Ween's Dean Ween amongst others.