Mark Lanegan: Still alone and lost
first appeared at The Daily online, Thursday, December 10, 1998
by Ralph Schwartz
In the summer of 1995, I fell
in love with Mark Lanegan, but I
wound up instead with the
woman who would become my
wife.
Perhaps I owed it to her.
After all, she's the one who
turned me on to Whiskey for the
Holy Ghost (1993), Lanegan's
second solo album. She had
fallen for Lanegan first, but I dismissed her feelings as the superficial sort that
a lot of young women reserve for long-haired rock icons.
My love, on the other hand, goes deep. I love him for his mind - more
specifically, I love him for what he writes. My wife may rally to ”Borracho,’
the second track on Whiskey (”Fuck yourselves, I need some more room to
breathe’), if only because the song allows her to get off on her own anger.
But after I heard the title song of The Winding Sheet (1990) several times
over (”The darkness dares/My eyes to close’) I experienced more than
emotional release. I wished I had written the song myself.
Those who have heard Lanegan - most of them through his work as lead
singer for Screaming Trees - love him for his voice. He possesses a rich,
emotive baritone that ranges from reverberant to reedy, as if his voice were
falling out from under him. But even his weak moments are well-turned;
weakness, after all, is what he's about.
Despite Lanegan's pedigree as a Screaming Tree, his own music resists
placement within the commercial scene. What he has to offer, nobody in their
right mind would buy. His roots are blues and country, but his is a deeply
bruised strain of the blues. During ”Riding the Nightingale,’ from Whiskey,
Lanegan warns his listener, ”I'm gonna start cryin'’ - and he does, in an
extended melodic wail, for the next minute. My wife says she hates this song,
and I think I know why. Such private moments should not be recorded for
mass consumption. What Lanegan reveals of himself, if one is willing to take
it in at full force, can only bring on hopelessness or narcotic escape.
Lanegan has notoriously opted for the latter, and those who like to sniff
out references to drug use will find them in his songs. He almost never sinks
to the wanton glorification that Layne Staley of Alice in Chains is prone to in
songs like ”God Smack.’ His references are more oblique, but they therefore
leave a stronger chill: ”I'm not feeling any pain/but I know that it's real.’ It
doesn't take a junkie to know where he's coming from.
Some variation can be
discerned in Lanegan's three
albums, which includes this
year's Scraps At Midnight (all of
his recordings are on Sub Pop).
Even so, this variety is restricted
to shades of black. Lanegan is
ethereal in The Winding Sheet, a
set of dirges for his own funeral
set to dirty electric and weepy
acoustic guitars. His pain
becomes more coherent on
Whiskey, which has a less
solipsistic, more overt
blues/country feel. On Scraps,
Lanegan and Mike Johnson take
no chances, revisiting the sound
that worked well on Whiskey.
Johnson plays lead guitar for
Lanegan and arranges his
albums; he also plays bass for
Dinosaur Jr. and has released his
own solo work on Up and TAG
records. On Scraps at Midnight,
Johnson has more opportunity to
show off his twangy, tear-stained distortions on tracks like the opener,
”Sixteen.’
Lanegan's band, which includes Johnson and - these days - former
Soundgarden bassist Ben Shepherd, played a sold-out show at the Showbox
on November 19th. Perhaps they were warming up for their unusually
high-profile gig tonight at the Key Arena KNDD FM's winter music fest
known as the ”Deck the Hall Ball.’ They will share the billing with Hole,
Garbage and other purveyors of landfill-inspired music. Regardless of the
company Lanegan will keep tonight, last month the Showbox was his for the
taking - and he took it. The band ripped through the set list, forsaking their
acoustic instruments for a full-on electric show. Lanegan himself seemed to
be amped, speeding through almost every song as if he intended the show
merely as a sampler platter of his solo career.
But Lanegan threw himself into ”Borracho,’ a rising, rocking desperation
piece tainted with more than his usual dose of anger. After the song had
whipped up the crowd that pressed tightly against the stage, the band walked
off without ceremony. Within half a minute, they were back -ÀLanegan and
Johnson only needed a smoke. Thus refreshed, they kept up the fast pace
with ”Carnival’ (with Dave Kreuger on violin) and ”Because of This,’ which
closes Scraps at Midnight. Like ”Borracho,’ these tunes expand slowly and
inevitably, as if his self-loathing were a flower that bloomed for everyone
else's enjoyment.
It's easy to dismiss Lanegan's three albums as self-piteous and redundant.
But courage is his muse, and it allows him to speak to his audience about his
torments, thereby absolving himself from them. ”Tonight I learned one
valuable lesson,’ he said, after returning to the stage with his cigarette. But
the rest of his statement was incomprehensible. Perhaps it was just an
offhand joke - not that I heard anyone laugh. I can only hope that his
valuable lessons aren't meant for me anyway. I don't have the voice to carry
them.
After the two-song encore, Lanegan and his band made their ultimate exit
without so much as a good-bye. No matter. We all filed readily enough out
of the Showbox and onto the cold pavement of First Ave.
We had heard all that our hearts would bear.
Mark Lanegan plays at the Deck the Hall Ball tonight, along with a
number of other bands. Tickets are $31.50.
BACK