Enjoy. Hopefully.

This is from Mark Lanegan’s first solo CD, The Winding Sheet from way back in 1990--which is a depressingly long time ago.

If you’re curious, here’s the Lala version of the entire album in all its rough glory. I once described it as being a lot like a demo tape. It’s not polished, the mix is a little rugged, and no one would say it was over-produced. What it is, though, is in the tradition of old, southern Americana in the same line as Chris Whitley’s Dirt Floor. Brilliant stuff, but not to everyone’s taste.

Back in ‘90, this album was quite a shock to people who were more used to Lanegan as the voice of the latter day psychedelic rock of Screaming Trees and went mostly unnoticed in the music world. His next album, Whiskey for the Holy Ghost was where i discovered his moonlighting gig and where I fell in love with his solo stuff. But this album, a little rougher around the edges, has its own charm.

“Ugly Sunday” chugs along like something Johnny Cash might have sang and the mood, though a little less country, hits the same ground. “Down in the Dark,” one of the few full-on rock songs in the mix, makes its way onto my road trip playlists regularly (and wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Screaming Trees album). It’s after this opening salvo, though, that the songs really surprise.

“Wild Flowers” and “Eyes of a Child” are quiet, sweet little gems. Not happy--this was coming from a man who was getting serious about his drug addictions--but pretty, gentle, tender songs with very little adornment. That’s for the best since they stand so well on their own. “Wild Flowers” has an echoey sound that gives it the intimacy hearing a song played live in a church. “Eyes of a Child” has a more full sound and more full instrumentation, but, with the tone of these two songs, it would have been impossible to avoid putting them one after the other on the album.

As much praise as I can give some of these songs, though, this half of the album is ridiculously uneven. “Juarez” is a sleazy mess and it sounds terribly out of place. “Woe” feels unfinished. “I Love You Little Girl” is, perhaps, too light for a Lanegan album.

But you forgive it when you hear the scary, nightmarish “The Winding Sheet"--a ghost story that’s gothic in the old, unposed sense of the word. The chiming bell-like guitars in the foreground play over a fuzzed-out drone in the background while Lanegan sings of ghosts and God and dying. Wonderfully evocative.

Another song--the song up there in the YouTube clip at the top--that makes it worth the trip is the angry take on the old standard “In the Pines.” Here, with its roots in Leadbelly’s reading, “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” sounds very little like most of the bluegrass, country, and backwoods blues versions of “In the Pines.” Here it is aggressive and menacing (helped along by Curt Cobain singing in the background and playing guitar, Chris Novoselic on bass, and Screaming Trees’ own Mark Pickerel pounding drums). The blend of Lanegan’s and Cobain’s vocals near the end of the song is about perfect--and a sad musical footnote of their aborted attempt to start a side-project together.

It’s a good album that might have approached greatness, surprisingly, by killing off a few of the weaker songs that detract from the high points.

Still, this is one of those hidden bits of the whole “grunge” thing that made that whole, overblown (yes, that’s an intentional reference) scene worth revisiting. Especially now where the pop music has become so overproduced and soulless, filled with whiny voices and Justin fucking Beiber, that we could use something to remind us of what music sounds like when it isn’t grown in a lab.

Just sayin’.