Mark Lanegan
Gargoyle

Among the various reviews I've read about this latest record by Mark Lanegan, which is presented here as 'Mark Lanegan Band', there was one suggesting that among those it defined as survivors of the 'grunge', Lanegan is the one who has aged best and essentially the only one who apparently still has something to say.

Frankly, I consider this statement to be a half-truth.

Apart from the fact that the definition of 'grunge', a genre that was more like a kind of commercial artifice and, let's say, somewhat instrumental to the record market at a certain historical moment, is always something undefined and inclusive of realities that are very different musically and culturally.

Apart from this, considering realities like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden absolutely dispensable (who listens to them other than those who were their historical fans?) and Nirvana as something that inevitably ended with the death of Kurt Cobain and without, in my opinion, having developed and fully shown his great qualities as a sensitive and inspired songwriter; I've always considered Mark Lanegan one of my favorite artists and Screaming Trees are still one of my favorite bands today, one of those I consider fundamental in my formation as a listener.

Apart from this, I've always liked Mudhoney, and in my opinion, they are the ones among all the so-called 'grunge' exponents who have aged the best and have remained true to their original nature and continued to offer great and powerful music.

However, I have long considered Greg Dulli artistically uninspired (in the last Afghan Whigs album it is evident that he is tired and lacking energy, his voice is practically unrecognizable) and Mark Lanegan. An artist who, after reaching perhaps his highest moment with 'Bubblegum', seems even bored and simply drags himself from one project to another with more or less little interest.

The Gutter Twins was an unfortunate invention by Greg Dulli, who wanted Mark Lanegan also as a guest with the Twilight Singers; frankly, his collaboration with Queens of the Stone Age is not very relevant; Lanegan's fortunes and 'misfortunes' in his duets with Isobel Campbell were variable; his collaborations with Soulsavers are noteworthy; the album ('Black Pudding') recorded together with Duke Garwood in 2013 and released on Heavenly Recordings is beautiful.

His last three solo albums ('Blues Funeral', 'Imitations', 'Phantom Radio') in series have done nothing but disappoint his historical fans.

In truth, none of these three albums can be exactly defined as 'bad', but surely none of them leaves or has left a mark. So much so that in general, Mark Lanegan continues to be referred to as an artist belonging to the past. Yet, as we have seen, he is an artist still today and in recent years prolific like few others on all levels, so...

Here he is again now trying with 'Gargoyle', released on the last 28th of April, again via Heavenly Recordings, and featuring as guest stars a bunch of 'friends' whom I have mostly already mentioned: Greg Dulli, Duke Garwood, Josh Homme, and Jack Irons among others.

The atmospheres of the album are, as per tradition, quite dark, almost crepuscular, but what strikes is the fact that in any case and in practically the majority of the songs, the sound is pervaded by a certain drone sound that, besides contributing to increase this sense of unease and this evocation of twilight, seems almost an actual artistic choice by Lanegan, as if he somehow wanted to disguise or erect a kind of defense system that one may consider possibly as an introspective choice in the same way as the sound solutions found by Nick Cave in his last album 'Skeleton Tree'.

Moreover, some similarities with Nick Cave and his latest work are traceable in some of the album's songs, such as in the gospel 'Goodbye To Beauty' (or 'Sister'), one of the album's best songs, a gospel recital entirely based on Lanegan's voice where electric guitars rampage like distorted ghosts flashing like flashes in the darkness.

Obviously, Lanegan's voice, a timbre that doesn't seem to lose its power compared to the past ('Nocturne') constitutes the heart of the entire work which, in my opinion, offers some points of interest and proposes some interesting solutions. Starting from the obsessive thrilling and percussive rhythms of the opening track 'Death's Head Tattoo' to the lysergic and evocative, almost ethereal intermissions of 'Blue Blue Sea'; ballads with atmospheres that are both dreamy and somehow rural like 'First Day Of Winter', dominated by the sound of the electric organ; the droning and psych rock-blues of 'Beehive' (with some reference to the enveloping sound of the old Screaming Trees) and 'Old Swan'.

A couple of tracks are absolutely passable, like the rock-blues of 'Emperor', with typically QOTSA guitars, or the inconclusive 'Drunk On Destruction', built on almost industrial premises.

But that's not the real problem of the album; rather it is the lack of what can be considered real emotional peaks and what can be deep suggestions, albeit even evoked by the album's atmospheres.

What remains is what appears as a blameless fatigue of an artist who has given so much, perhaps from his point of view even too much, to the point of not wanting to go beyond the strictly necessary; as well as an album whose 'fault' is that of not being beautiful, yet not even bad enough to make a mark in this sense and perhaps invite our favorite singer-songwriter to a sort of redemption which I imagine he doesn't care about at all.