Sometimes, there is nothing better than looking back and putting memories in order to understand who we are. Mark Lanegan, one of the most turbulent artists in American alternative music, has put his past in order with the recent publication of a memoir, Sing Backwards and Weep . So much so that the musician wanted to accompany him with an album that would also serve as an existential review, appearing like a soundtrack of himself.
Ambitious and overflowing in its 15 compositions, Straight Songs of Sorrow is the result of a deep and visceral vision about life and music that the ex-member of Screaming Trees possesses, the group with which he began to pour good gasoline into the fire of the grunge in the eighties. Since shooting solo, Lanegan, who left in the 90's outstanding sharp works like Whiskey for the Holy Ghost and I'll Take Care of You, he followed in the wake of Tom Waits and especially Nick Cave, guys who could twist a blues so much that they drowned him in rock remorse. From there, he has only struggled in his own darkness of drug addiction and depression until he became a musician with a difficult mold, a bird of the night without a cage who in the last decade has painstakingly experimented with electronics.
From 'I Wouldn't Want to Say', a first cut with the Berlin ghost of David Bowie-Lou Reed-Iggy Pop, Straight Songs of Sorrow showcases every known Lanegan with thunderous force. The musician knows who he has been and who he is and acts accordingly. Not only because he surrounds himself with the best, with collaborations from Adrian Utley of Portishead, Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs, Warren Ellis of Bad Seeds, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and Ed Harcourt, but because he shoots a collection of scorching and gloomy vignettes. rock, like 'Ketamine', 'Churchbells, Ghosts', 'Ballad of a Dying Rover' and 'Bleed All Over', and fragile folk sensations like 'Apples from a Tree' and 'This Game of Love', accompanied by his wife, Shelley Brien, and looking back on his cherished duels with Isobel Campbell. All this set of punch, of rising above his own figure, sounds with a reinforced epic, illustrated in the more than seven minutes of the spectacular 'Skeleton Key', a composition that with that hurtful voice he traps in his suffocating embrace.
In an age when Nick Cave has reached a mystical high point, widely recognized and fascinating for his latest albums, Mark Lanegan is still behind him, another admirable wandering spirit. And in the meantime, in this last flight he has drawn his great self-portrait. It will be difficult to forget.
Straight Songs of Sorrow. Mark Lanegan. Heavenly Records / Pias.