Album: Blues Funeral
Genre: alternative rock
Length: 55:27
Veteran Mark Lanegan's seventh solo album has finally arrived eight years after Bubblegum and it is well worth the wait. His work with bands like Screaming Trees, Mad Season, In the intervening years, Lanegan has kept himself busy with a host of side projects, with albums made with Soulsavers, as part of The Gutter Twins and three albums with Isobel Campbell. On paper this album should simply not work, mixing Lanegan's trademark howl with a synth-blues inspired backdrop, but listening to this album through comes as a complete revelation.
Lanegan has always been one of the more soulful musicians out there, his voice is worn and defeated sounding, but wonderfully distinct and powerful and makes even the slightest songs on this album work. 'Ode to Sad Disco' is a stand-out track on the album, a six-and-a-half minute expansive synth opus, with Lanegan's melodies sounding more exposed and sincere than usual. While being a downbeat album that often plays like a funeral procession (the title Blues Funeral hardly being the most joyous of titles), there are so many moments of poetic poignancy, as Lanegan is a man from a bygone generation, but a survivor none-the-less.
This can't be called a return to form for Mark Lanegan, as he has never really left. While there are still elements of his more rock-oriented roots on tracks like 'Riot in my House' and 'The Gravedigger's Song', this is very much new territory for Lanegan. What this is really is a wonderful reminder of the power of music from one of the best musicians not afraid to try something new and expand into new territory. An unheralded success.
86
(review written on 9/3/12)
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