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SORROW
THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2024 EXCLUSIVE AND WILL BE AVAILABLE INSTORE ON SATURDAY APRIL 20TH ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.
IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 22ND.
First time on vinyl for David Sylvianís side project with his brother Steve Jansen (Japan/ Rain Tree Crow) and German musician/ producer Bernd Friedmann aka Burnt Friedman. Features the 9 tracks from the original album plus 2 tracks from the ëMoney for Allí EP and the Previously Unreleased Burnt Friedman remix of ìîAtom & Cellîî. All on vinyl for the first time. Designed by David Sylvianís long-time collaborator, Chris Bigg (23 Envelope / 4AD). Housed in a beautiful gatefold sleeve with printed inner-bags.î
IF THERE ARE ANY REMAINING COPIES THEY WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT 8PM ON MONDAY APRIL 22ND.
First time on vinyl for David Sylvianís side project with his brother Steve Jansen (Japan/ Rain Tree Crow) and German musician/ producer Bernd Friedmann aka Burnt Friedman. Features the 9 tracks from the original album plus 2 tracks from the ëMoney for Allí EP and the Previously Unreleased Burnt Friedman remix of ìîAtom & Cellîî. All on vinyl for the first time. Designed by David Sylvianís long-time collaborator, Chris Bigg (23 Envelope / 4AD). Housed in a beautiful gatefold sleeve with printed inner-bags.î
After forming in 2016, Pillow Queens released a series of singles, honing their craft and working towards their first album, In Waiting (2020). Along the way there has been acclaim from UK and American press, many sold-out gigs and an appearance on James Corden's Late Late Show. After signing with Canada’s Royal Mountain Records, they released a follow-up album, Leave the Light On in 2022, touring the UK, US and Europe extensively, including shows at Austin’s SXSW and supporting Phoebe Bridgers in Glasgow.
Three albums in three years indicates a serious work ethic, for their new album Name Your Sorrow they stuck to a strict schedule. They showed up every day from 9-5, in a windowless Dublin room to just play, swap instruments and experiment. From there, they decamped to a rural retreat in County Clare along the Atlantic coastline of Ireland, to immerse themselves further. “ The palpable shift in sound and tone is possibly the result of working with a new producer, Collin Pastore from Nashville, who has produced boygenius, Lucy Dacus and Illuminati Hotties. The band holed up for three weeks at Analogue Catalogue studio in Newry, and quickly noticed that the change of scene and personnel impacted on the record.
The result of combining new experimentation, heartfelt lyrics and a sound that pinballs from quiet and loud offers a kind of catharsis. Of picking through the shrapnel to find slivers of hope. Previously, the band have road-tested new tracks live, playing them to an audience and reworking them based on the crowd’s reaction. They haven’t done that this time, because the songs already feel fully formed. The band also had to unlearn the process of questioning whether a song sounded like “a Pillow Queens song”. There are definite links to the last two albums, but Name Your Sorrow feels like a triumphant step in another direction.
Three albums in three years indicates a serious work ethic, for their new album Name Your Sorrow they stuck to a strict schedule. They showed up every day from 9-5, in a windowless Dublin room to just play, swap instruments and experiment. From there, they decamped to a rural retreat in County Clare along the Atlantic coastline of Ireland, to immerse themselves further. “ The palpable shift in sound and tone is possibly the result of working with a new producer, Collin Pastore from Nashville, who has produced boygenius, Lucy Dacus and Illuminati Hotties. The band holed up for three weeks at Analogue Catalogue studio in Newry, and quickly noticed that the change of scene and personnel impacted on the record.
The result of combining new experimentation, heartfelt lyrics and a sound that pinballs from quiet and loud offers a kind of catharsis. Of picking through the shrapnel to find slivers of hope. Previously, the band have road-tested new tracks live, playing them to an audience and reworking them based on the crowd’s reaction. They haven’t done that this time, because the songs already feel fully formed. The band also had to unlearn the process of questioning whether a song sounded like “a Pillow Queens song”. There are definite links to the last two albums, but Name Your Sorrow feels like a triumphant step in another direction.
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: Moody post-grunge riffs and soaring distorted guitar swells break into upbeat indie jangles and major-key lifts, all topped with the gothic-leaning vocals that easily switch from morose and solemn into stadium-fillingly grand in the blink of an eye. A wonderfully produced, perfectly written statement from the Pillow Queens.TRACK LISTING
Side 1
1. February 8th
2. Suffer
3. Like A Lesson
4. Blew Up The World
5. Friend Of Mine
6. The Bar's Closed
Side 2
1. So Kind
2. Heavy Pour
3. One Night
4. Love II
5. Notes On Worth
The unequivocal psychedelic Rock opera gets new life once more in the form of a brand-new reissue via Madfish
Touted as the world's first Rock opera & one of the great classics of the psychedelic era, the album stands favourable comparison with "Sgt Pepper" & "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" as one of the defining records of its time.
Recorded at Abbey Road in 1967 & 1968, it was one of the first true concept albums that pre-dates The Who's 'Tommy' by a year. Exploring the life of a single character & his journey in learning to trust people & ultimate disillusionment, 'S.F. Sorrow' is like none that have come before it. Walking the line between experimental rock, psychedelic pop & even sharing similarities with proto-Heavy Metal the album was years ahead of its time & still stands atop as one of the most pivotal concept albums ever.
Beginning with 'S.F. Sorrow Is Born', the track introduces the protagonist via folk leaning acoustic guitar. Later on in the album, proto-Heavy Metal tendencies are revealed on 'Balloon Burning'. 'Well Of Destiny's swirling progressive tendencies bleed into 'Trust' before the melancholic yet profound closure of 'Loneliest Person'
Touted as the world's first Rock opera & one of the great classics of the psychedelic era, the album stands favourable comparison with "Sgt Pepper" & "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" as one of the defining records of its time.
Recorded at Abbey Road in 1967 & 1968, it was one of the first true concept albums that pre-dates The Who's 'Tommy' by a year. Exploring the life of a single character & his journey in learning to trust people & ultimate disillusionment, 'S.F. Sorrow' is like none that have come before it. Walking the line between experimental rock, psychedelic pop & even sharing similarities with proto-Heavy Metal the album was years ahead of its time & still stands atop as one of the most pivotal concept albums ever.
Beginning with 'S.F. Sorrow Is Born', the track introduces the protagonist via folk leaning acoustic guitar. Later on in the album, proto-Heavy Metal tendencies are revealed on 'Balloon Burning'. 'Well Of Destiny's swirling progressive tendencies bleed into 'Trust' before the melancholic yet profound closure of 'Loneliest Person'
TRACK LISTING
S.F. Sorrow Is Born ( 03:06 )
Bracelets ( 03:43 )
She Says Good Morning ( 03:26 )
Private Sorrow ( 03:54 )
Balloon Burning ( 03:53 )
Death ( 03:08 )
Baron Saturday ( 04:03 )
The Journey ( 02:48 )
I See You ( 03:58 )
Well Of Destiny ( 01:49 )
Trust ( 02:52 )
Old Man Going ( 03:12 )
Loneliest Person ( 01:32 )
CD Bonus Tracks
Defecting Grey ( 04:33 )
Mr. Evasion ( 03:30 )
Talkin' About The Good Times ( 03:46 )
Walking Through My Dreams ( 03:37 )
'The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience' is the upcoming album by Cornwall-based folk singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Angeline Morrison, her first record for the historic Topic Records label. Produced by Eliza Carthy and featuring some of her beautiful, soaring string arrangements, The Sorrow Songs was recorded in Cornwall at Cube Studio and is a work of what she calls 're-storying.'
"The traditional songs of the UK are rich with storytelling, and you can find songs with examples of almost any kind of situation or person you can think of. But whilst people of the African diaspora have been present in these islands since at least Roman Times, their histories are little known - and they don't tend to appear in the folk songs of these islands."
Angeline Morrison began to wonder if she could discover more about the lives of these ordinary and extraordinary Black ancestors and create an album of songs in the sonic style of UK folk and traditional music, in the hope that this silent space could then begin to be filled with stories. With the help of Arts Council National Lottery funding, Angeline began what became a year of research into this neglected area of Black British history. The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience is the result.
Released to commemorate Black History Month in October, this powerful record is intended to honour these Black ancestors who lived in these islands and to act as a gift to the folk community.
"The traditional songs of the UK are rich with storytelling, and you can find songs with examples of almost any kind of situation or person you can think of. But whilst people of the African diaspora have been present in these islands since at least Roman Times, their histories are little known - and they don't tend to appear in the folk songs of these islands."
Angeline Morrison began to wonder if she could discover more about the lives of these ordinary and extraordinary Black ancestors and create an album of songs in the sonic style of UK folk and traditional music, in the hope that this silent space could then begin to be filled with stories. With the help of Arts Council National Lottery funding, Angeline began what became a year of research into this neglected area of Black British history. The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience is the result.
Released to commemorate Black History Month in October, this powerful record is intended to honour these Black ancestors who lived in these islands and to act as a gift to the folk community.
TRACK LISTING
Interlude - Some Terrible Habits
Unknown African Boy (D.1830)
Black John
Interlude - These Little Ones
The Beautiful Spotted Black Boy
Mad-Haired Moll O'bedlam
Interlude - Nobody Round Here Likes It
The Hand Of Fanny Johnson
Cinnamon Water
Hide Yourself
Cruel Mother Country
Interlude - In The Village
The Flames They Do Grow High
Interlude - Need Not Apply
Go Home
Slave No More
Three Queens in Mourning first gathered in summit to sing celebration of the publication of Will Oldham’s book of collected lyrics, Songs of Love and Horror. Alasdair Roberts (Appendix Out), Jill O' Sullivan (Jill Lorean), and Alex Neilson (Trembling Bells, Alex Rex) each arrived provisioned with a small armful of selections nearest and dearest from Bonnie Prince Oldham’s far-reaching catalogue.
Three Queens in Mourning’s takes on these tunes follow naturally from the fit between Will’s words and their three distinctive voices. Alasdair Roberts’ sweet, guileless delivery of “Christmas Time in the Mountains” amplifiesthe lacerating quality of the lyric “we need an enemy / I’m saving all my rage for you”; even if at the outset of the song we’re told that “time is the enemy,” the abiding sentiment—the red-hot word that organizes my memory of the song—is rage. Ali’s and Jill’s trading of verses on “New Partner” puts a different spin on what had previously registered as an especially mercurial first-person narrative voice, one that swoops between tenderness (“lay back, rest your head on my thighs”) and ecstatic self-absorption (breaking it to the ex to whom the song is addressed that “I’ve got a new partner riding with me”). Add Alex’s voice, not only for his madcap “Lost Blues,” but as part of the choir on “Ohio River Boat Song” (a song with origins in the traditional “Loch Tay Boat Song”), and these three Scottish accents singing about the muddy Ohio, Smoketown, Oldham County, and Floyds Knobs, I mean, there’s not much else this Kentuckian—these are all deeply familiar landmarks—can say. Type through tears. On this back to back records, The Bonnie 'Prince' Billy LP is a collection of three cover versions from Ali, Jill and Alex directory and one original track.
Three Queens in Mourning / Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is a collaboration between Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy), Alasdair Roberts (Appendix out / Drag City), Jill O Sullivan (Jill Lorean) and Alex Neilson (Trembling Bells, Alex Rex).
Three Queens in Mourning’s takes on these tunes follow naturally from the fit between Will’s words and their three distinctive voices. Alasdair Roberts’ sweet, guileless delivery of “Christmas Time in the Mountains” amplifiesthe lacerating quality of the lyric “we need an enemy / I’m saving all my rage for you”; even if at the outset of the song we’re told that “time is the enemy,” the abiding sentiment—the red-hot word that organizes my memory of the song—is rage. Ali’s and Jill’s trading of verses on “New Partner” puts a different spin on what had previously registered as an especially mercurial first-person narrative voice, one that swoops between tenderness (“lay back, rest your head on my thighs”) and ecstatic self-absorption (breaking it to the ex to whom the song is addressed that “I’ve got a new partner riding with me”). Add Alex’s voice, not only for his madcap “Lost Blues,” but as part of the choir on “Ohio River Boat Song” (a song with origins in the traditional “Loch Tay Boat Song”), and these three Scottish accents singing about the muddy Ohio, Smoketown, Oldham County, and Floyds Knobs, I mean, there’s not much else this Kentuckian—these are all deeply familiar landmarks—can say. Type through tears. On this back to back records, The Bonnie 'Prince' Billy LP is a collection of three cover versions from Ali, Jill and Alex directory and one original track.
Three Queens in Mourning / Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is a collaboration between Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy), Alasdair Roberts (Appendix out / Drag City), Jill O Sullivan (Jill Lorean) and Alex Neilson (Trembling Bells, Alex Rex).
TRACK LISTING
Three Queen In Mourning / Bonnie Prince Billy (Will Oldham/Palace/BPB Covers)
1/Stablemate
2/Christmas Time In The Mountains
3/Lost Blues
4/Madeleine Mary
5/No More Workhorse Blues
6/No Such As What I Want
7/I See A Darkness
8/Trudy Dies
9/Tonight’s Decision
10/Darling
11/New Partner
12/Ohio Riverboat Song
Bonnie Prince Billy
13/Coral And Tar
14/Coward Song
15/Dead Man
16/Wild Dandelion
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
Colin Stetson is an American saxophonist and multireedist who has collaborated with an number of influential indie rock acts such as Arcade Fire, Bon Iver and Bell Orchestre. This new release 'SORROW', led by Stetson, is a reimagining of Henryk Górecki's most famous piece, performed by a 12-piece band including Arcade Fire's Sarah Neufeld, Saltland's Rebecca Foon, Greg Fox of Liturgy, Megan Stetson and more and recorded in 2015 in Brooklyn, New York.
"We all have those moments when we experience a piece of music that transforms us, and this was one of those moments for me," says Stetson. "Over the years, I went on to listen to this record countless times, always determined to absorb every instance of it, to know it throughout and fully. And this dedication to a thorough knowledge of the piece eventually gave way to a need to perform it." "The concept was simple, and true to the original score. I haven't changed existing notation, but rather have worked with altering instrumentation, utilizing a group consisting heavily of woodwinds, synthesizers, and electric guitars... The arrangement draws heavily from the world of black metal, early electronic music, and from my own body of solo saxophone music. The result is an intact rendition of Henryk Górecki's 3rd Symphony, though one which has been filtered through the lens of my particular musical aesthetic and experience."
"We all have those moments when we experience a piece of music that transforms us, and this was one of those moments for me," says Stetson. "Over the years, I went on to listen to this record countless times, always determined to absorb every instance of it, to know it throughout and fully. And this dedication to a thorough knowledge of the piece eventually gave way to a need to perform it." "The concept was simple, and true to the original score. I haven't changed existing notation, but rather have worked with altering instrumentation, utilizing a group consisting heavily of woodwinds, synthesizers, and electric guitars... The arrangement draws heavily from the world of black metal, early electronic music, and from my own body of solo saxophone music. The result is an intact rendition of Henryk Górecki's 3rd Symphony, though one which has been filtered through the lens of my particular musical aesthetic and experience."
‘Dreamstone’ is the debut long-player from the highly talented UK producer Sorrow. Sorrow’s electronic, beats-driven music floats above the furthest reaches of Ambient Dubstep, propelled aloft by a dubbed out, sonorous Garage hybrid of his own invention. A series of self-released tracks and remixes and three EPs over the last two years, as well as collaborations with other artists (including Stumbleine, Asa and Submerse) have rapidly earned him a profile as one of the UK’s rising producers. True to his moniker, Sorrow’s music has an underlying current of melancholy, with mournful strings and piano and ghostly vocals, but he balances the mood artfully with head-bobbing beats and a wonky sense of humour that emerges unexpectedly here and there. In ‘Dreamstone’, the lush strings and languid zig-zag beats of ‘Embrace’ flow into the Bossa Nova lounge of ‘Maelys’, which in turn yields to the darker, more experimental tones of ‘Supernova’. From the chilled out ambience of ‘Dalliance’, featuring the sultry guest vocals of CoMa, to the restless, more aggressive beats of ‘Intruder’, ‘Dreamstone’ works equally well for late night sonic explorations or laid-back Sunday mornings.
TRACK LISTING
1. Elixir
2. Moodswing
3. Dreamstone Ft CoMa
4. Dalliance Ft CoMa
5. Embrace
6. Maelys
7. Supernova
8. Flowerchild
9. Shadowed Doubt
10. Gallows Hill
11. Intruder