Mark Lanegan - Straight Songs Of Sorrow (2020) Hi-Res

As he continues to release albums, Mark Lanegan increasingly becomes a lone wolf, always wandering off to experiment with new things or aggressively change gear. After Blues Funeral in 2012, the old singer for Screaming Trees has reentered the solo game no longer content with his years among Queens Of The Stone Age or his (sublime) duos with Isobel Campbell. Straights Songs of Sorrow shows us again how kaleidoscopic his art can be. Here we are met with contemporary grunge, electro rock, austere blues, unusual folk and shamanic ballads. Led as always by his charismatic, baritone voice, his 2020 offering is, for the first time, entirely autobiographical. Fifteen songs inspired by his personal history as told in his memoir, Sing Backwards And Weep, released alongside the album.

His youth in the state of Washington during the grunge tsunami, his drug addiction, death, but also hope and humour, all is there in this feast of intimate delights. “Writing the book, I didn’t get catharsis,” explains Lanegan “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.” Finally, Straight Songs of Sorrow merges the writing strengths of Mark Lanegan’s first solo albums like the brilliant Whiskey For The Holy Ghost (1994) with the upfront complexity of his more recent works. An intense fusion that is successful with the help of guests among the likes of his old partner Greg Dulli from Afghan Whigs, the Bad Seeds’ Warren Ellis, Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Portishead’s Adrian Utley and even Ed Harcourt. A fantastic rock’n’roll offering worthy of being experienced.