Mark Lanegan ‎– Straight Songs Of Sorrow 2LP

Mark Lanegan ‎– Straight Songs Of Sorrow

‘Straight Songs Of Sorrow’ combines musical trace elements from early Mark Lanegan albums with the synthesized constructs of later work. The meditative acoustic guitar fingerpicking – provided by Lamb Of God’s Mark Morton – on ‘Apples From A Tree’ and ‘Hanging On (For DRC)’ echo 1994’s ‘Whiskey For The Holy Ghost’. Yet one of that record’s touchstones was Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks’, echoed in the new album’s opener ‘I Wouldn’t Want To Say’, where Lanegan extemporises à la Ballerina over musique concrète wave patterns generated by his latest favourite compositional tool, a miniature computer-synth called the Organelle. The lyric clings onto the music, emulating queasy momentum: “Swinging from death… to revival.” “That song is the explanation, the beginning and middle and end of that entire period of time,” Mark says. “The encapsulation of the entire experience, book and record. So I started with that.” Lanegan affirms that every song references a specific episode or person in his autobiography, albeit some more explicitly than others. ‘Hanging On (For DRC)’ is a loving ode to his friend Dylan Carlson, genius progenitor of drone metal and a fellow unlikely survivor of Seattle’s narcotic dramas. “I was always unhappy, and he was the guy who was always smiling, even through my crazy schemes that eventually got both of us into a lot of trouble.” ‘Straight Songs Of Sorrow’ feels both definitive and unique, a culmination of its creator’s arc yet also indicative of the energy that drives him onto future horizons.

Tracklist: 
1. I Wouldn't Want To Say
2. Apples From a Tree
3. This Game of Love
4. Ketamine
5. Bleed All Over
6. Churchbells, Ghosts
7. Internal Hourglass Discussion
8. Stockholm City Blues
9. Skeleton Key
10. Daylight In the Nocturnal House
11. Ballad of the Dying Rover
12. Hanging On (For Drc)
13. At Zero Below
14. Eden Lost and Found

Label: Heavenly 
Released: 2020