Mark Lanegan - The bard of the abyss

The song that has the most power to depress me is 'Wonderful World' by Sam Cooke. Or 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' by the Beach Boys. Actually, let's put it this way: all songs that convey positivity and joy fill me with infinite sadness. Because deep down you know that things, in reality, will always be different.

(Mark Lanegan)

Disillusionment, quiet rage, melancholy without sentimentality, happy in darkness and sadness because it's real and it belongs to him; the quote above sums up, in essence, Lanegan's worldview, what can be found in the solo work of one of the most evocative and profound voices in songwriting of recent years.

Born on November 25, 1964 in Ellensburg, an unremarkable small town in Washington State, Mark Lanegan was just a passionate music listener until, meeting up in Seattle with two old friends, brothers Gary Lee and Van Conner, he joined them and Mark Pickerel to form a band, Screaming Trees.

The group, purveyors of what Lanegan himself called "psychedelic hard rock," achieved a fair degree of international popularity thanks in part to the grunge movement, which was then at its peak and into which the quartet was universally lumped, despite bearing little resemblance to Nirvana, Pearl Jam and company.

Despite the band's reasonable success and the good relationships among its members, Lanegan felt the need to pursue a parallel career in which to pour out the true musical leanings he felt inside — his passion for folksingers like Leonard Cohen, Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, and Dino Valente — inclinations that would prove remarkably different from the music he'd made until then with the Conner brothers and from grunge in general, and far better suited to expressing the deepest recesses of his soul.

The first break and the revelation

And my mind is an opened door/ with nothing inside

Already on his debut album, The Winding Sheet (Sub Pop, 1990), one can grasp just how far the solo project Lanegan intended to pursue was from the paths he had traveled so far.

Although echoes of the Screaming Trees' work can indeed be found, for instance in the restless "Down In The Dark," the whole album is steeped in that sense of sweet darkness, that blues-blackened folk that would go on to become the unmistakable hallmark and trademark of Lanegan's solo work.

The trembling, pained voice in the folk of ghosts and solitude on the title track, scraping the depths in search of an escape from alienation through oblivion on "Ugly Sunday," or hiding a demon beneath its lightness ("fear and paranoia run together in my dreams") amid the cutting violin of "Undertow": it's in this dimension that Lanegan realizes he can make the best use of his vocal and interpretive gifts.

With help from Mike Johnson and various friends (including Kurt Cobain and Chris Novoselic), Mark manages to forge his own personal take on folk that does look to the founding masters (the closing folk-blues of "I Love You Little Girl"), yet possesses a character all its own, decisively underscored by the singer's powerful delivery — as in the muted howls of "Ten Feet Tall," the falsetto highs of "Wild Flowers," and above all in the Leadbelly-esque cover "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?," featuring the two Nirvana members, which opens with a solemn, funereal pace before erupting into anguished screams at the end.

The lyrics mirror the author's state of mind at the time: a struggle with his own demons that would only be resolved later on, and which here seems to have begun to surface in earnest.

Before his friend Layne Staley sang "Down In A Hole," Mark sang "I think my blood might boil/ then my veins might burn" in "Down In The Dark"; but there was still more to come before he hit bottom and started over.

Coexistence and awareness

Here comes the devil, prowl around

cause it’s me who knows what it cost

Three years pass, and Screaming Trees ride the ups and downs, swept along by the grunge hype engulfing the whole world, helped along by a few films, but the world the singer from Ellensburg actually inhabits is one of ghosts, a life of booze and heroin.

Less of a public figure than Cobain, but reduced to just as sorry a state, Mark would find a way to exorcise his demon with Whiskey For The Holy Ghost (Sub Pop, 1994), arguably his most fully realized masterpiece.

On the table pictured on the cover: a bottle of whiskey, a glass, a pack of cigarettes and a full ashtray, a Bible — damnation and redemption embracing, or perhaps wrestling for the upper hand, and in the middle of it all, Lanegan, who, writing all the songs himself and scaling back Johnson's contribution (with whom he'd split the workload on the previous album), unleashes a string of spine-chilling tracks. Take the drunken prayer-song of the title track, for instance, in whose surges Lanegan delivers a remarkable vocal and interpretive performance. Or "Kingdoms Of Rain," the soundtrack to the saddest, most desolate western imaginable, with organ flourishes like gusts of dry wind. And even more so, "Riding The Nightingale," a vocal drift in the manner of Buckley senior, moving between highs and lows accompanied only by a few acoustic chords and a faint choir.

It's all a dichotomy between good and evil in the soul's struggle to save itself: sulfurous, slithering songs ("Judas Touch") coexisting with lukewarm suns ("El Sol") and saxophone pacifications ("Sunrise"), the God-fearing folk of "Pendulum" or the stark, hoarse blues of "Dead On You".

Finally, "Beggar's Blues": feet on the ground, amid the dust, not knowing where to go or which road to take, assuming there's even a fork in the road to choose from, assuming the moment doesn't come when one of the two paths turns into the very abyss you've already fallen into and never want to see again.

Atonement and rebirth

Sixteeeenn

It's 1997, and Lanegan is arrested on suspicion of drug possession; a good lawyer gets him off in court, but by now even he knows he's been reduced to little more than a shadow of a man, and he decides to put an end to it by going through detox in a clinic.

On Scraps At Midnight (Sub Pop, 1998), written at Rancho De La Luna in the Californian desert, Lanegan is a changed man. "The record catches me at a moment in my life where there's happiness and hope," he says, and those feelings somehow seep through in the songs, even though the tracklist opens with "Hospital Roll Call," on which Mark screams and repeats just one word: "Sixteen," the number of the room where he was admitted for treatment; the instruments run wild, transfiguring the confusion, while the slashing guitar embodies the suffering.

But then almost everything turns quiet: the reflective folk of "Hotel," the unburdened heart of "Stay," the slow slide-guitar-and-piano piece "Bell Black Ocean" all seem intent on sweeping away the dark side.

Solitude and peace seem to reign in that blend of Tim Hardin and Nick Drake that is "Day And Night," with a trembling harmonica in the background, and in the gorgeous, dreamlike ballad "Last One In The World," one of the finest farewells ever put to music.

But not everything was easy, and as usual Lanegan lays it all out directly through his songs: there's the suffering of sleepless nights, "praying for sleep/ praying for something so easy," in the piano-and-guitar nocturne "Praying Ground," or honest declarations of intent ("pull all my shit together/ try for another breath") in the Waits-style country-western of "Day And Night".

Peace and harmony are lost by the end: "Because Of This" is tremor, disorder, vibrations and stab wounds, the physical and mental struggle of a body writhing in on itself trying to purify itself and return to some normal state.

The record doesn't measure up to its predecessors, perhaps because it's a transitional work, a passage toward a phase in which one needs to gather one's thoughts, focus and regroup, starting from firm ground to build a new career on solid foundations.

A tribute to the roots

I’m working

every day

If the previous record was the fruit of a phase of change, I’ll Take Care Of You (Sub Pop, 1999) represents a tribute to what Lanegan considers the roots of his solo work.

The voice is clean, free of the damage accumulated from alcohol and excess in the past, the sound is soft, hazy. Lanegan becomes a crooner amid near-jazz moments ("Creeping Coastline Of Light"), pained and heartfelt spirituals ("On Jesus Program") and organs suspended to sketch out rediscovered loves ("Together Again").

But above all, as mentioned, this is a tribute record; first to his friend and source of inspiration Jeffrey Lee Pierce, whose "Carry Home" he covers with moving simplicity, then Tim Hardin in the folk dotted with piano and country violin of "Siloh Town", the obvious Fred Neil honored through the crossing of voices in the sublime "Badi-da", and the lesser-known Tim Rose (the vibrant, psychedelic blues of the closing "Boogie Boogie") and Dave Van Ronck (the drunken, solitary western of "A Shanty Man's Life").

Interpretation is the key to everything, the honesty and respect for the song despite the personal adaptation, as in the warm, enveloping, sensual soul of "Consider Me" or the traditional "Little Sadie", with a performance somewhere between the last Cash and the most outlaw Steve Earle.

From here he would (re)set off down a new path, perhaps less raw and sincere than the previous one, but equally remarkable.

Maturity and the years to come

Got no need for shelter

all is forgiven and understood

Mark Lanegan is now a different person. His latest records have been a success, in 2000 he definitively closed the Screaming Trees chapter and began collaborating with Josh Homme's Queens Of The Stone Age ("I like the music they make, I like them as people and I enjoy sharing a stage with them," he says), taking part in "R", and with the former leader of the Afghan Whigs, Greg Dulli.

Now the spotlight is on him, and with it come expectations too.

Out comes Field Songs (Sub Pop, 2001), the fifth album of his solo career, and Lanegan's shift is already visible on the cover: hair cut short, a reflective yet more at-peace look; the record that results is one of his best. The Ellensburg singer-songwriter refines his style, made of a folk always balanced between darkness and light, love songs (the hammond organ of the sweet "Pill Hill Serenade") and the roughness of reeling, distorted folk-blues (the closing "Fix").

Unlike the rawer, more instinctive tracks of the first two albums, Lanegan here seeks out more refined and complex solutions; "No Easy Action" twists like a psych raga amid coils of female backing vocals and wurlitzer, "Miracle" wallows in darkness and "Resurrection Song" in an evanescence suggestive of earthly passing, while "Don't Forget Me" is a folk-blues that pays homage to the author's Mexican roots ("my parents come from New Mexico and as a child I lived in the American Southwest, where the influence of Mexican culture is very strong").

It's above all the guitar work that produces the best tracks: the mood created by the interplay of electric and acoustic guitars on "Kimiko's Dream House" (written with his friend Jeffrey Lee Pierce), or that of "Love", which seems to pay tribute to both sides of Tim Hardin's artistic life, deliver sublime moments and confirm an artist still in possession of one of the best songwriting talents of the past decade.

From here on, it's all downhill, with all the risks of stumbling that entails.

The following year Lanegan took an active part in the hugely successful "Songs For The Deaf" by Queens Of The Stone Age, and touring with the band he began sketching out tracks for his next album.

In 2003 everything seemed ready for the release of Bubblegum, but something wasn't quite right, and Lanegan decided to put out a preview, a taste of what would be found on the album; thus came Here Comes The Weird Chill (Beggars Banquet, 2003), an eight-track EP that already offered a sense of the project the LP would later build on. It's a dark and diabolical record: with the blues-rock of "Methamphetamine Blues", the Beefheart-esque cover of "Clearspot" and the desert-like "Skeletal History", a more markedly rock path emerges, less folk than previous works, though not without moments of respite, like the soul whisper for piano and voice of "Lexington Slow Down" or the brief, solemn "On The Steps Of The Cathedral". The EP was recorded by the artist with the Mark Lanegan Band, the ensemble of musicians who accompanied him on tour and with whom he would bring about a new turn in his sound.

In 2004 Bubblegum came out, again on Beggars Banquet, and the traits already noted in the previous, shorter work are amplified, producing a stylistic split that, while it worked over the brief span of the EP, proves damaging when stretched across 15 tracks.

If on one hand Lanegan captivates with rarefied gospel touches ("Strange Religion") and evocative ballads ("Morning Glory Wine"), on the other he also ventures into blues-rock and stoner territory, the fruit of what he absorbed during his intense work alongside Queens Of The Stone Age.

The rock of "Sideways In Reverse" and "Hit The City" (a duet with PJ Harvey) are episodes that don't seem to belong to the Lanegan we've known so far, and despite the heavy involvement of illustrious guests (two former Guns N' Roses members, Homme and Olivieri), the record only comes off as half successful.

It takes the searing, autobiographical "When Your Number Isn't Up" or the vibrant "Like Little Willie John" to find the old Lanegan again, the one of frontier folk who pays homage to his own roots, the one who sings about his own feelings, his own life.

Perhaps he was tired, perhaps the frantic activity that led him to record two albums and an EP in the time it once took him to record a single record had worn him out — whatever the case, Lanegan pulled the plug. So to speak, though, because it's only his solo career that comes to a halt, making way for a cross-cutting path made up of appearances, collaborations, and split records: everyone wants his scratchy, evocative voice, everyone craves a little piece of Lanegan to show off on their own record.

And Mark certainly doesn't say no: he steps away from Queens Of The Stone Age, but sings on their "Lullabies To Paralyze", takes part in "She Loves You" by Greg Dulli's Twilight Singers, and in 2005 contributes to the first live release of the Gutter Twins project, in which he stars alongside the former Afghan Whigs frontman.

In 2005 another important encounter laid the groundwork for a new collaboration. At a concert in Glasgow (or so "legend" has it), Mark Lanegan met former Belle & Sebastian member Isobel Campbell. The two found the right chemistry, and the dark crooner lent his voice to the Scottish angel's EP "Time Is Just The Same".

This is how the idea of a joint record was born, and after various exchanges of ideas and recordings over the internet, in 2006 Ballad Of The Broken Seas was released, credited to Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan. The record is actually much more Lanegan than Campbell, who comes to dominate the folk, blues and country ballads, as they're closer to her style and artistic background.

Nevertheless, the album didn't turn out as well as either the artists or the audience had hoped; the overlap of the two voices and two styles, radically different from one another, only works when the right balance is found, as on the title track or the opening "Deus Ibi Est", and paradoxically, while Lanegan's contribution feels somewhat predictable, the record becomes interesting whenever Campbell takes the reins, as on "Black Mountain" or "Saturday's Gone".

The work shared with Campbell, far from providing the inspiration for a solo comeback, only confirmed to Lanegan how much he enjoys sharing things with others; so the American songwriter also picked up his relationship with the Twilight Singers again, taking an even more active role on the 2006 EP A Sitch In Time, and, a year later, lent his voice to most of the songs on It's Not How Far You Fall, It's The Way You Land by the trip-hop electronic duo Soulsavers.

2008 is an important year for Lanegan, but still in his role as a sharer and collaborator. First comes the long-awaited debut of the Gutter Twins project, split with Greg Dulli. Saturnalia, however, falls short of expectations. While tracks like "All Misery Flowers", "Seven Stories Underground" and "Who Will Lead Us" show Lanegan in fine form, the rest of the album lives on material that already feels familiar from the pair's previous collaborations in the Twilight Singers, as with "The Station" or "Idle Hands".

In short, the record that many were waiting for turns out to be less surprising than usual.

A few months later comes the second instalment of his artistic partnership with Isobel Campbell, Sunday At Devil Dirt, which improves on some of the messier moments of the previous record, but still doesn't fully convince. It's another example of the clash between angels and demons, between blues grime and folk-pop polish. Lanegan obviously dominates the scene as he did on Ballad Of The Broken Seas, if only for the sheer virile force of his voice, here pushed in places to depths that seem to scrape the bottom of hell itself, so low and tar-thick does it sound. And while it's true that on tracks like "Seafaring Song", "Come On Over" or "Who Built The Road" the vocal blend between the two has been honed to near perfection, it's equally true that the ending gets lost among ballads that leave little impression. Better, then, are the moments where each goes their own way, like the shamanic Lanegan of "Back Burner" or the sensual Campbell of "Shot Gun Blues".

A record that shows how the partnership everyone thought impossible, given the two artists' substantial differences, is indeed workable - though not as easy as the two of them might have hoped.

In 2009 Lanegan renews his partnership with Soulsavers, lending his voice to Broken, another pleasant record that nonetheless doesn't add anything particularly significant to the band's sound.

A year later comes the third chapter of the partnership with Isobel Campbell, Hawk, which marks a step forward for the duo, however modest; Isobel and Mark seem to converse ever more naturally, adapting their personal styles to the songs at hand - Lanegan, for instance, turns light-footed on the folk-pop of "Time Of The Season", while Campbell gets feisty on the rockabilly of "Get Behind Me".

The compositional approach still lives off two distinct identities: some songs clearly belong to solo Lanegan ("You Won't Let Me Down Again", "Come Undone"), while others lean more toward the Englishwoman's pop style ("Time Of The Season", "Sunrise", "To Hell & Back Again"), and despite Campbell's two solo turns, the end result feels, more than ever, like the work of a genuine duo, now firmly established as such, rather than an improvised meeting of two artists.

A new Lanegan for the 2010s

Eight years after Bubblegum, his last solo effort, Lanegan takes back the reins of his own destiny to embark on a new solo adventure, and since he's no homebody, he even tries to throw us off balance. Yes, because Blues Funeral (2012) can leave you disoriented; not right away, because it starts off slyly with a great, gritty, swaggering rock-blues number ("Gravedigger's Song"), then delights with a smooth, sensual blues ("Bleeding Muddy Water") and, following that, the psych-folk veins of "Gray Goes Black" and the spiritual ones of "St. Louis Elegy". But already in the latter you sense something has crept in, subtle, yes, but noticeable, different... you let it slide, especially since the guitars on the rocking "Riot In My House" still carry the fresh memory of Bubblegum, but as soon as "Ode To Sad Disco" kicks in you find yourself wondering what these synths and drum machines are doing on a Lanegan record. "Ode To Sad Disco" sounds almost like a remix, as if the Pet Shop Boys had got their hands on a Lanegan song. Strange - surely he hasn't caught an '80s bug, has he?

But then "Phantasmagoria Blues", with its desert country-folk air, makes us forget the episode, yet when the stoner groove of "Quiver Syndrome" gets tinged with electro-glam touches and chimes, and the eighties pop hiccups of "Harborview Hospital" arrive too, the thought becomes harder to shake off: has the dark folk-bluesman grown infatuated with this sound, and is he looking for new ways to rejuvenate his music? The keyboard flourishes and choirs on the dragging "Leviathan" don't help much, nor do the folk horns of the evanescent "Deep Black Vanishing Train" - they only leave us more confused, before we get lost in the slow, effects-laden coils of the seven-minute "Tiny Grain Of Truth". In the end, it takes some real effort to make sense of this labyrinthine identity crisis, in which Lanegan wavers between the old and what might be the new. For now the old path seems to win out, the one on which the American songwriter always manages to give his best and deliver extremely sharp songs; but the rest isn't entirely dismissable either - it takes several listens, yet in the end some of this electronic Lanegan's ideas win you over, even if not completely.

Faithful as few others to a spirit of boundless collaboration, the ever-generous Lanegan returns barely a year later with a new partnership and a fresh batch of songs. This time the beneficiary of his generosity is the eccentric London musician Duke Garwood, a kindred spirit the former Screaming Trees frontman had already hosted on his band's most recent studio effort and taken on tour some time ago as an opener for Gutter Twins. Unlike what happened with the double stint with Soulsavers or the latest (lacklustre) instalment of the project shared with Isobel Campbell, here it seems out of place to dismiss Black Pudding (2013) as just another of the Ellensburg singer's many cameos. The chemistry between the two artists is solid and convincing. A fingerpicker nearly as skilled as James Blackshaw, with echoes of a slightly more narcotic Greg Weeks in his playing, the Englishman treats himself to the instrumental musings that open and close the circle in the vein of a dark, hypnotic folk solipsism. In between, the singer runs riot with his unmistakable expressive signature, oscillating between flashes of pure class and sheer cliché. The impression given right from the starting gun by "Pentacostal" - a title that's pure Lanegan and already says it all - is that our man is coasting through the job with clearly conservative intent, albeit wrapped in a sparser package than usual, courtesy of the "friends" from the QOTSA circle, Alain Johannes & Justin Smith.

Garwood lays down a bare-bones musical backdrop that manages to assert itself atmospherically without ever becoming intrusive, making for the ideal setting to showcase a voice that by now seems capable of anything. Elsewhere, an admirably intimate dimension prevails instead, with an earthy concreteness ("Mescalito") or a melancholy veil (the clarinet of "War Memorial") that are nothing new for him but still impress every time. "Death Rides a White Horse", meanwhile, gives us a slow, trance-like Lanegan, who seems to see his own reflection in the solemnity of classic Delta Blues. There's less wonder here but more humanity, with the formal limits of the exercise left plainly on display. "Driver" then reveals, by contrast, an artist working to keep a lower profile than usual, intoning a kind of secular prayer. The catchy, vicious funk-blues of "Cold Molly" brings us back to the contaminated climate of his last effort, with the added bonus of Duke's excellent dirty work, called upon to relentlessly tear away at his guitars. To soothe the die-hard nostalgics, the gem "Shade Of The Sun" is more than enough, a very disciplined piece duly supported by the harmonium's incantatory accompaniment, with a sound both cathartic and sickly.

The record released in April with Garwood is followed, in September 2013, by the second covers collection of his career, a full fourteen years after I'll Take Care Of You. Given that the producer of this Imitations (2013) is the same as back then, Martin Feveyear, it seems inevitable to start from a direct comparison with that earlier experience. The album harks back to it quite clearly in the restrained wonder found in the grooves of "She's Gone", though updating its imprint to the standard of an old-school chansonnier, intimately traditionalist but blessed with an extraordinary vocal gift on top. As it presents itself, the album shows no interest in taking any real risks. The clean, reliable folk-blues of the opening "Flatlands" (which Chelsea Wolfe's "Unknown Rooms" seemed to have tailor-made for him) broadly echoes the desert suggestions of his mature work (and of the recent "Black Pudding") without quite managing to hide a certain weariness, the impression of standing before an artist who has aged. Things are no different a little further on, when Mark chooses to tackle a song by his friend Greg Dulli ("Deepest Shade", from the Twilight Singers catalogue), the quintessence of the nostalgic spleen so dear to him: the result is flattering, though given the registers involved it's hard not to file it away as business as usual for someone like him, here even a touch too composed. The packaging is impeccable, the crooning seductive, like a seasoned entertainer's, and yet on this terrain the oracular Lanegan proves more predictable than ever. Even when he recasts, in a bright little folk vignette, the James Bond theme sung by Nancy Sinatra ("You Only Live Twice"), the appeal and the problems remain the same: everything is exactly as you'd expect. Only by looking past this limitation can you appreciate the record's point - a simple pastime, yet not without enjoyable moments or (more rarely) small surprises.

There are only a couple of cases where Mark risks something more personal, paying the price in terms of cohesion: the warmth of the horns in the ecstatic setting of "Brompton Oratory" (from the hyper-contrasted Nick Cave of "The Boatman's Call"), in place of a slavish replica that would have served no purpose, and the Waits-like pose he strikes in the bare-bones setting of "Mack The Knife", a Kurt Weill classic whose force and breadth he preserves intact. For the rest, the signs of expressive distance from the earlier, more dated covers collection are plain to see.

This really is a Lanegan leaning toward imitation, unlike the one from the days of I'll Take Care Of You: he conforms on a formal level, straining himself too much to let the various reference models shine through; or else he favours the emotional side with moved interpretations (as in the first of three Andy Williams covers, "Solitaire", a clear tribute to a recently deceased performer) aimed at evoking the genuine fascination exerted by family records played to death in his childhood. In other cases, though, the material itself pushes well beyond his usual boundaries. That's true of the bold but not entirely convincing revival of "Élégie Funèbre" (by Gérard Manset, here entrusted to the tricks of his faithful Alain Johannes) as well as the single "I'm Not The Loving Kind", from John Cale's "Slow Dazzle", which ends up sounding far more like the original than like its occasional interpreter. The doubts raised by pairings that sometimes feel a bit unnatural don't erase the merits of an album that is very carefully crafted and rich in prized guests (from a resurgent Mike Johnson to a rhythm section boasting both Screaming Trees drummers, Mark Pickerel and Barrett Martin, as well as Bill Rieflin and Duff McKagan), whose sincerity remains an indisputable detail.

On the cusp of turning fifty, Lanegan released Phantom Radio in 2014: ten tracks done his way, full of light and shadow, that won't fully disappoint his fans but won't thrill them beyond measure either. That dark, deep, pained, passionate voice is immediately present on "Judgement Day", a minimalist murder ballad that's nonetheless majestic, effectively backed by a funereal organ reminiscent of the mood of Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. The spell is cast again on "I Am The Wolf", with arpeggiated acoustic guitar and an evanescent carpet of synths: here the ghost of Nick Cave peeks through, showing us "the voice" once again at ease in desolate, wild landscapes, the perfect complement to his melancholy delivery. Alongside the fabric we all know well, other textures and colors are added, not quite in line with the background just outlined. This involves a revival of certain 80s sounds, on the British new wave side: drum machines (which our man curiously pulled from a smartphone app) and above all synthesizers, an approach already partly pursued on the previous Blues Funeral. Hence the opener "Harvest Home", an enveloping, sinuous mid-tempo in the style of Echo & The Bunnymen, with skeletal guitars counterbalancing powerful keyboards. Hence also "Torn Red Heart", a deliciously sweet and dazed dream-pop number, really not far from certain suggestions associated with New Order and The Cure.

But alas, not everything here is gold: tracks like "Floor On The Ocean", "The Killing Season" and "Seventh Day" come across as murky and weak, clumsy and banal imitations of melodic, catchy, polished and glossy trip-hop (à-la Morcheeba, to give an idea). The same goes for "The Wild People", a decent but merely elegant rehash of what's already been expressed in the earlier ballads. Fortunately, "Death Trip To Tulsa" arrives to put a full stop on things: once again it feels like watching the closing credits of a film, perhaps some pulp noir directed by the Rodriguez/Tarantino duo. Again, an overhead shot: there it is, the big engine car driven by Lanegan, pulling away from the same remote places it had just crossed. Having tamed his demons, it's headed to the city. Maybe to Seattle, home, to a party for a fiftieth birthday.

In February 2015, Lanegan's electro ambitions took concrete shape with the release of A Thousand Miles Of Midnight, a collection of remixed versions of tracks from both Phantom Radio and the EP "No Bells On Sunday", released a few months earlier. The first thing that jumps out is the weight and renown of the remixers involved, ranging from big names (Moby, UNKLE) to friends who gladly lent themselves to the project, such as Greg Dulli (already with him in the Gutter Twins project), Mark Stewart and Soulsavers. These are alternative versions, more ("Seventh Day") or less (the super-stylish "I Am The Wolf") recognizable, which give Lanegan's songwriting a fresh new guise, once again thrusting him into the present and ensuring he doesn't stay cocooned in a reassuring shell too tied to the past. The remixes don't always lean primarily rhythmic: in some cases the mood turns atmospheric ("No Bells On Sunday" becomes an ambient-tinged soundtrack, "Jonas Papp" turns into the sonic rendering of natural landscapes), densely nocturnal ("Floor Of The Ocean"), or menacing and unsettling ("Waltzing In The Blue" seems to channel the most Luciferian side of Tricky).

All of which shows just how constraining Lanegan now finds the role of the damned crooner: instead he means to inhabit a range of different styles, confirming a path that has often seen him excel, whether as a grunge pioneer with Screaming Trees, as a prized guest on several Queens Of The Stone Age records, as the writer and performer of modern nursery rhymes shared with Isobel Campbell, or in the more serious singer-songwriter mode of his solo work. The material on Phantom Radio, conceived in a way that wasn't conventionally rock, lent itself perfectly to the treatment delivered on A Thousand Miles Of Midnight; the quantity and quality of the guests brought in to remix it ensures stylistic variety within continuity — the voice is always Lanegan's, it's the containers that shift in sonic density, adapting to reflect the changing times. Modern technology opens up new scenarios, the sandpapered blues remains, but now it takes on different shapes.

2017 is the year of Gargoyle, which at first glance might seem the least brilliant of his last three albums, the proverbial transitional work: in reality, compared to "Blues Funeral" and "Phantom Radio", it stands out as the least easily classifiable, while still keeping intact that innate ability to burrow damnably under your skin, listen after listen. The songwriting is a three-way affair: new guitarist Rob Marshall (previously with English alt-rock band Exit Calm) injects fresh energy, making a decisive contribution to the six tracks he co-wrote; on the others, the co-writer is Alain Johannes (who also handles production), responsible almost exclusively for the more shadowy episodes — "Blue Blue Sea", "Sister" and "First Day Of Winter" — the ones that keep Lanegan tied to tradition. When the two join forces, the best results emerge, on the first two tracks, where both the album's sound and its poetics are best defined, revealing how present the demons in the background still are ("Devil lives in anything" Mark sings on the superb opener "Death's Head Tattoo", with that atmosphere of constant electric tension, of imminent danger), emerging vividly as darkness falls ("Midnight calling to colour me insane" he declares on the following "Nocturne", insanely beautiful, opening on the notes of an unmistakably dark-wave bassline; post-apocalyptic in its stride and epic in its chorus, this is Lanegan's new classic, capable of renewing the glories of "Grey Goes Black" from five years earlier).

Always ready to probe the wild side of human existence (the first two words sung on the album are, not by chance, "Wild Thing"...), its hardships, addictions and obsessions, Lanegan knows how to offer moments of poetic tenderness ("Goodbye To Beauty") alternating with full-bodied alt-rock played at full tilt ("Beehive", "Old Swan"), and — as if that weren't enough — on "Drunk On Destruction" he treats himself to bagging a stadium-rock anthem in the style of U2 of old. The voice (baritone, but this time less heavy than usual) remains his unmistakable trademark, but Gargoyle also gains momentum thanks to the stature of the lineup involved: alongside the trusty trio of Greg Dulli, Josh Homme and Duke Garwood, we find — among others — Jack Irons behind the drums (where pre-sampled electronic drums aren't used) and Martyn LeNoble (Porno For Pyros) on bass. Had it come out a few weeks later, Gargoyle would probably have been dedicated to the memory of Chris Cornell, who passed away in mid-May, but even unconnected to that tragic event, it stands as yet another testament to the enviable vitality of one of contemporary rock's great survivors. With all the losses that have come to light, we cling even harder to Mark: to some a middle-aged uncle, to others an older brother who's been with us for nearly thirty years.

2018 marks, for Mark Lanegan, the year of the second chapter of his collaboration with close friend Duke Garwood. The album to start from in analyzing this "With Animals" is, however, exactly Black Pudding from 2013, whose banner "With Animals" carries on, intending to be its sequel. While on "Black Pudding" Lanegan growled over an acoustic guitar with its string-work left bare, everything on "With Animals" is more spiritual, and thus immersed in a sacred, muffled atmosphere — a smoky, narcotic limbo where old Mark's obsessive confessions echo amid loops, muffled beats, and spare blues-guitar phrases. The menacing title track adds to this setting the warm, intense flavors Duke Garwood discovered on his desert journey with Tinariwen. The two tracks closest to "Black Pudding" are "Upon Doing Something Wrong", which nonetheless differs from the old album's tones thanks to an extremely light guitar touch, and "Spaceman", a fleeting but inevitable glance toward the Mississippi. Also among the more traditional pieces is "L.A Blue", a very dark blues marked by Lanegan's rough, sensual phrasing. Thanks to his iconic, deep voice, the lone wolf of Ellensburg manages to draw attention with every entrance, even in a reflective, understated context like that of "With Animals", where he can't tower over everything else the way he does on records with the band. Yet he's not sparing with pauses and fades into shadow, devices meant to make the atmosphere even more shamanic, but also to showcase the extraordinary technical gifts of his soul brother. Garwood is incredible on guitar — the way he makes it weep on "Ghost Stories" is textbook — but he's equally skilled when it comes to carving grooves into the soul through otherworldly horn interventions ("My Shadow Life") or searing string drones ("Feast To Famine").

2019 brought the rare and precious collaboration between Italian producer Alessio Natalizia, aka Not Waving, and the American singer-songwriter under the moniker Dark Mark, who together, with Downwelling, gave birth to a project we might describe as erudite electronic singer-songwriter fare. Lanegan's dark, deep voice stands out clearly amid Natalizia's compositions, at times limpid, at times acidic, laying out the characteristic topoi of the "Lanegan-ian" lexicon (an anthology of "graveyard", "demons", "sin", "darkness"...). These are stories of sinners on the edge of a city alleyway, or at death's crossroads, told firmly by Lanegan and driven instead by an incredible life-force and a deep melancholy springing from Natalizia's sophisticated electronics ("Murder In Fugue"): it begins by accepting the absence of a future, over quiet synth notes and words multiplied in echoes ("Signyfing The End"); it walks along the city streets, where the metallic sounds of chains grate against the protagonist's urge to flee ("City Of Sin"); it crosses a dazed Babylon to complete the catharsis ("Burned Out Babylon") and finally arrives at the awareness of being lost regardless ("The Broken Man").

Also in 2019 came Somebody's Knocking by the Mark Lanegan Band, an album whose sound is clearly shaped by British new wave and synth-pop of the Eighties (in particular, by the darkwave of Siouxsie and of The Cure's "Pornography"). The album's adrenaline-charged electric opening tricks the listener into thinking they're facing something familiar thanks to the surf-blues-rock of "Disbelief Suspension", but that nostalgic illusion already begins to fade with the electronic beats and synths of "Letter Never Sent", which creep in among the guitars.

The initial impact of this new release is almost off-putting for die-hard "Lanegan-ites", but the record slowly opens up, thanks in particular to its creator's ability to experiment with more shades of his vocal expressiveness and his storytelling skills through melody, without shying away from poppy, singalong solutions as on "Gazing From The Shore". Another interesting aspect of the album is the choruses: whenever a track seems to be heading in one direction and echoing something pre-existing a bit too closely, the Ellensburg crooner picks another melody and veers toward the unexpected. Emblematic of these two traits of the record is "Name And Number", with its unexpected turns and that lopsided coda where saxophone and synths lend a flavor of X-Ray Spex and New Order. Lanegan continues heading toward the unknown, and the deeper into the dark he finds himself, the more he savors freedom, and perhaps also liberation from the burden of grunge and the weight of being a "survivor" of that era.

Mark Lanegan is insatiable. His hunger for blues and authenticity, his restlessness and his artistic exploration in multiple directions lead us to one of the Ellensburg crooner's most convincing efforts since "Blues Funeral" (4AD, 2012). The fifteen tracks of the new album arrive after last year's release of an album of carefree experimentation and a precious collaboration with Italian electronic producer Not Waving (Alessio Natalizia).

Straight Song Of Sorrow (2020) was released alongside the singer-songwriter's memoir, "Sing Backwards And Weep: A Memoir" (Hachette Book, 2020) — the account of his descent into hell, through abuse and addiction, and his fortunate climb back out — sharing its evident autobiographical nature. The album is the most balanced summation of the styles and souls screaming inside Lanegan, which have also led him to collaborate with Isobel Campbell or Duke Garwood, and which continually shape his blues songwriting.

Halfway through the record stands out the splendid pastoral elegy of "Stockholm City Blues", with strings accompanying the singer-songwriter's testimony, almost representing the ghosts that have pursued him since rehab and perhaps continue to torment him. The pre-finale opens onto the abyss with "At Zero Below", an all-star song in which Lanegan is joined on backing vocals by Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs, Twilight Singers, Gutter Twins), on violin by Warren Ellis (Dirty Three, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds) and on piano by Ed Harcourt. Closing things out is the electro-gospel of "Eden Lost and Found", a duet with Simon Bonney (Crime & City Solutions). The song's mournful, hazy stride, its contours sketched by strings, achieves a work of maturity and probable liberation, in which Lanegan finally (re)discovers the balance needed to satisfy an inexhaustible personal and artistic hunger, more enduring than a vein of gold in the rocks of his West. What remains are the songwriter's words, in which pain has already turned into hope, in an allusion to rebirth never so clearly reminiscent of Johnny Cash.

A few months later Lanegan released a new remix collection. Another Knock At The Door re-engineers the entire tracklist of "Somebody's Knocking", further emphasizing its already quite present electro component, entrusted to the trio Iyeara. After this restyling, though, even less remains of those crumbs of blues and deep unease that had somehow continued to linger even on one of Lanegan's less convincing albums. But the focal point isn't so much that, as the retro-leaning beats the Iyeara chose to bank on, which carry the singer of mournful, nocturnal atmospheres toward now-obsolete eighties (or at best nineties) oriented territory, pulsing and colorful.

Not everything deserves the bin, to be fair, but for every "Playing Nero" that genuinely works, there are too many tracks that spin their wheels, to no avail. A project that undoubtedly shows Lanegan's courage in constantly putting himself back in play, but even more so the full freedom granted to whoever handles his songs, even in places where he might rightly have vetoed something. Mark loves to play, and to let others play, with sound; he aims never to repeat himself endlessly, to reinvent himself by involving other artists — but other times, as in the case of the remix collection of "Phantom Radio", it had gone decidedly better...

On February 23, 2022 came the horrific news that chilled the world of rock: Mark Lanegan had died at just 57 years old at his home in Killarney, Ireland. He had fallen seriously ill with Covid in 2021, to the point of ending up in intensive care, an experience so traumatic that it drove him to write a memoir, "Devil in a Coma." The cause of death remains unknown, but what is certain is the dismay felt by everyone who had followed his exploits, first as a grunge pioneer, then as a fierce and fearless singer-songwriter. A bard of the abyss who plumbed depths of unheard-of darkness, formidable and unforgettable for us all.

Contributions by Stefano Ferreri ("Black Pudding", "Imitations"), Ariel Bertoldo ("Phantom Radio"), Claudio Lancia ("A Thousand Miles Of Midnight: Phantom Radio Remixes", "Gargoyle", "Another Knock At The Door"), Maria Teresa Soldani ("Downwelling", "Somebody's Knocking", "Straight Song Of Sorrow")

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