Recent Stories with tag mark lanegan

Yesterday, I described "You Won't Let Me Down Again," the second track on Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan's upcoming album, Hawk, as "strangely uplifting despite its rather downbeat, but hopeful?, lyrics." Hours later, the duo issued a video for the song, their first for Hawk:

 

Downbeat despair on the open road? Check. Glimpse of hope? Yep. Pretty Isobel? Uh-huh. Stony Mark? Nope. He's one elusive dude. You'll definitely see the guy if you grab tickets for the pair's October 26 Neumo's gig.

Three albums into an initially very surprising collaboration, the sandpaper-and-velvet duo of Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan is finally cozy enough to play live in the U.S., including a stop at Neumo's on October 26. The third album, Hawk—following the acclaimed Ballad of the Broken Seas (2006) and Sunday at Devil Dirt (2008)—hits shelves August 24, but can be streamed via Campbell’s Facebook page now.

If you know Lanegan from his days fronting Ellensburg's Screaming Trees and have (ignorantly) tuned him out since, these atmospheric, South-souled songs will surprise you. If you're familiar with his eclectic, smoky solo catalog and/or work with the Soulsavers and Greg Dulli (as the Gutter Twins) or Campbell's Snuggie-soft voice (going back to 1996 with Belle and Sebastian), you'll be pleased. Either way, their latest work, though similarly fit for a long-forgotten, remote Texas tavern, is even more of a sonic—and somehow almost tactile—joy. (Campbell, the musical pants-wearer of the duo, produced.) Think salted caramel ice cream. First you wrinkle your nose, then you lick your lips.

Here's a quickly-penned reaction/review of Hawk's thirteen dusky, scene-setting songs, eight featuring Lanegan's awesome rasp, two surrendering the mic to young folkie Willy Mason (not actually featured on the Garden State soundtrack; more on that below), and one with fretwork from former Smashing Pumpkin James Iha.... (more)

Somehow, Alice in Chains never quite got its due. Of the "Big Four" bands to rise from Seattle's phenomenal grunge era, the more metal-leaning AIC sold millions of albums and scored multiple music award noms but didn't reach the success stratosphere of Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, or Nirvana. Perhaps the band's addiction-informed lyrics made Alice in Chains less accessible. Maybe its beautifully schizophrenic acoustic-electric album jumps (Dirt to Sap; Jar of Flies to Alice in Chains) threw people off. Or maybe the AIC guys just didn't have the extra luck that comes with looks; Cobain, Cornell, and Vedder each radiated virile creative darkness, while Jerry Cantrell and Layne Staley, Alice's pale, blonde harmonizing frontmen, seemed more distant and pitiable.

Drug addiction, which pervaded AIC's most successful release, Dirt, eventually put the band on the shelf. Staley, a fading presence after Dirt hit in 1992, succumbed to the disease ten years later. Ironically, by that time Alice in Chains had outlasted Nirvana and Soundgarden and witnessed Pearl Jam's members recoil from their success—without playing shows or recording a studio record after 1995. But Cantrell, drummer Sean Kinney, and bassist Mike Inez refused to officially disband.

When the group issued Black Gives Way To Blue last September—with vocalist-guitarist William DuVall assuming Staley's role—and played the Paramount last Thursday and Friday, we were reminded why: Alice in Chains is too good to stop making music.... (more)

This creepy vid for the Soulsavers' "Unbalanced Pieces," off Broken, their newish (available digitally since August; the physical release date in the U.S. is still on the horizon), second effort featuring former Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan, is entertaining in a Debbie-Downer-on-downers kind of way. So if you’re feeling up and want to go even higher, just listen.

 

Hear that other, higher-pitch voice twining around Lanegan's softened growl through the chorus? Whispering in the background? Turing the s-sounds in "unbalanced pieces" into a honeyed serpent's hiss? That’s avant-awesome, Faith No More/Mr. Bungle/Tomahawk/etc. mastermind Mike Patton.

Lanegan's previously done the duet thing, to wonderful effect, with Isobel Campbell. An album with Mr. Patton could be equally amazing. Perhaps more so. "Unbalanced Pieces" only hints, and beautifully so, at what their affinities for darkness and weirdness could produce.

The beautiful, moody Broken and whatever the enigmatic Lanegan does next will have to do till then.