Mark Lanegan in Jolly Old England. Bastard.

Mark Lanegan's new EP, Here Comes That Weird Chill, came out in the UK a few weeks before it comes out in the US. In fact, I still have to wait almost another week before the multiple copies that I've ordered from multiple locations around Denver are shipped. This is bad enough.

Worse is that Lanegan is doing a UK tour while I sit at home wishing that he were playing here in the US. This is bad enough.

Worse is that Lanegan does have US dates booked, but all of them happen to be on the Left Coast. Damnit.

It is nice, though, to see him getting a little extra press on this new CD. I'm guessing that his involvement in one of the "it" groups of this last year has helped raise his profile dramatically. Hell, he's been playing in music groups since the late '80's--he's worked with some of the biggest names in the last decade--and serious success has eluded him until his current stint with Queens of the Stone Age.

Not only do I think he's talented as hell, but I also think he's due a break or two.

The Independent in London has a review of a recent London show. Of course, it's got me all excited...

"Oh, and it hurts sometimes... God knows that it does," Mark Lanegan howls, clutching his microphone stand with star-tattoo-speckled hands, on the Led Zeppelin-esque "Because of This". He's not the first singer to have made that complaint, of course, but you'll find few today who can make it with Lanegan's ravaged gravitas. And that's not least because, where lesser singers have to make do with mere voices, this man has a force of nature at his command: granite gruff, sour-whisky soulful and formidably lived in.

Just how lived in has been the subject of plentiful speculation. Between the late Eighties and mid-Nineties, Lanegan was the frontman for Seattle's rustic-rock should-have-beens Screaming Trees, a band trailed by tales of multifarious mayhem - drink, drugs, infighting - wherever they roamed. (One of their touring members was Josh Homme, the singer/guitarist in Queens of the Stone Age, who now boast Lanegan among their touring line-up.) When his friends Jeffrey Lee Pierce (of The Gun Club) and Kurt Cobain died, some corners of the press began to fear for Lanegan's well-being. But he kept it together, to make a series of increasingly potent, personal, blues-flavoured solo albums, ranging from 1990's low-key The Winding Sheet to 2001's magnificently moody Field Songs. Whatever demons he has, this, thankfully, is where he directed them.

Live, his glowering presence does give off the air of someone who's been there, done that, and isn't about to waste time on between-song natter or budging from his microphone stand. The focus is squarely placed on the songs and the voice, and both are sufficiently wracked and rich to carry the can.

Musically, Lanegan's solo schtick tethers his songs of love, loss and darker matters to a moody mix of rock and US roots, played tonight by a five-strong band with taut restraint. As for the man's larnyx, you have to marvel at it, despite and because of any worries that his non-stop nicotine habit might break it at any minute. (The stage is Lanegan's ashtray.) It's not just a growl, but a voice of great range and character. On "One Way Street", a stealthy tale of "trying to get out" of some fix or other, it sounds like a rumble from the grave; on the gorgeous "Pill Hill Serenade", a wrecked but warm croon; and on a cover of The Sunset Travellers' "On Jesus' Program", a full-bodied howl.

Okay, request for Lanegan: play Denver. Please. Fergodsake.

Read the rest of the review.

Posted by zombyboy at December 3, 2003 09:41 PM | TrackBack