Mark Lanegan Band
Blues Funeral

THE REVIEW

In the last six months, I have experienced three moments of true joy. The first, when I read that on August 2nd, "Last Words," the forgotten album by Screaming Trees, would be released, which I tried in vain to review, battling against my enthusiasm. The second, when I listened to “Burning Jacob’s Ladder” (without having the slightest idea why Mark Lanegan wrote a piece for a video game, particularly a shooter). The third, just before Christmas, when I heard “The Gravedigger’s Song”: an orgasmic chill difficult to forget, for which a good part of the credit goes to the drums, the rest to Lanegan's voice whispering in French. An acid delirium, enough to make your flesh vibrate, that stirred within me thoughts that were anything but decent and rather questionable fantasies about gravediggers.

Let’s be clear: I have such a veneration for this man that I would have loved him madly even if he had read me the phone book or the final account of a utility bill. So, I am (or rather, I was) extremely biased. But, unfortunately, expectations are one of the worst curses existing. Put yourself in my shoes: I waited for "Blues Funeral" with the same anticipation as one waits for a lover. Frenzy, tachycardia, tremors, everything was there. And it all vanished by the third track. It happens, more than once in a lifetime, that you have to choose a side. That it could happen to me with Mark Lanegan, I would have never said.

Preliminaries. Cover: Power, Corruption & Lies. Seriously, what's happening this year? It's at least the third album I've seen like this. But he's Lanegan; anything is possible, don't be prudish, it's just a form of useless fetishism, move on to the music. Glance quickly at the tracklist and, after yet another devastating encounter with the gravedigger of my dreams, the ordeal: “Bleeding Muddy Waters” is an invocation to the ghosts of the bayou, a perfect blues, perhaps a bit too “clean” compared to the idea that the Mississippi swamps can conjure; a marvelous lullaby, contemplating the river delta by the light of the moon that barely peeks through the black clouds. It’s Mark Lanegan, period. «You’re the bullet, you are the gun/ You are the master, I’ve been the slave». I risk being too happy, too soon, and to my unhealthy fantasies is added a nice muddy touch of swamp. I'm ready. I was ready. “Gray Goes Black” opens, and after a couple of minutes, I find myself humming a verse from Jacob’s Ladder. I’m bewildered for a few seconds, go back, pay more attention: it’s her, but what happened? I hope it's a joke. Where did the piece go? This isn’t Jacob Singer fleeing hallucinations caused by his exposure to the scale: this is a sub-species of a Corrs song, damn it. Immediate and monstrous collapse of desire. What’s the point of taking the same, identical piece and diluting it before inserting it into the album? Because “Gray Goes Black” is exactly this: it’s the unlikely sister of Jacob’s Ladder. Some more hope was given to me by “St. Louis Elegy” which is indeed the worthy continuation of Jacob’s Ladder. It’s just how I feel. It’s still him, straddling "Field Songs" and "Bubblegum": the Lanegan sacredness returns, and he cries in silence, downing liters of alcohol until he feels sick. This is the Lanegan you like, “Riot in my House” brings the desire back to an acceptable level, although it could be better. I’m ready, again, I’m his. Then “Ode to Sad Disco” starts, and I understand there’s no hope. I went from semi-perfection to a damn Moby album.

Questions multiply infinitely, an album called "Blues Funeral", for heaven’s sake, and it looks like it’s been scavenged from a stall at an indie market. I try to think that, wanting to be an ode to sad disco(theque), having a certain sound is inevitable. I listen again, and I can’t describe it otherwise: atrocious. Awful. Terrible. The same fate befalls “Quiver Syndrome” and “Harborview Hospital”: I was up to my knees in mud, and I find myself clean and fashionably dressed on the beach in Brighton. I could tell you that the situation palely risked recovering with another couple of saving pieces (“Leviathan” and “Deep Black Vanishing Train”), if only the inexplicable fondness for Moby didn’t return forcefully in “Tiny Grain of Truth”. Now, if you want a glossy magazine opinion, I tell you this is a very radio-friendly album, easily above the average of most stuff circulating. If you want an honest opinion, know that I risk crossing “to the other side”. Because that the era of flannel shirts and the Conner brothers possessed behind it was over, is a fact. But that from the mind -and the heart- of Mark Lanegan such a thing could come, I didn’t expect at all.

I prefer to stop at Bubblegum.