Mark Lanegan
Whiskey For The Holy Ghost

LA RECENSIONE

Mark Lanegan has a frayed voice and the words fall from his throat.

They end up collected in a basin of acidic folk sounds, whose roots run much deeper than the previous distortions of the screaming trees.

Year of our Lord 1993: the alternative empire begins its downward slope, Lanegan is one of the first to plan an escape from the city of ghosts. To travel light and feel free, he brings along a stripped-down instrumentation: guitar, acoustic bass, drums. Any additional instrumental inserts he will pick up along the way. In his right hand, a bottle of whiskey, presumably imbued with the spirit of Tom Waits, the true one.

"Whiskey For The Holy Ghosts" is Lanegan's second solo work and it is a blues album, pure because it is dirty, swollen with drunkenness and smeared with ash. Though written during a wretched period for the author, when he is one of the many ghosts reflected in a half-empty glass, it is nevertheless a quiet album and, even though marked by a strong emotional tension, extraordinarily sharp. Few distractions and very few distortions: here, American tradition rules between electrified western (Pendulum), violin and double bass inserts (Carnival), echoes of carillon (The River Rise), organ carpets (Kingdoms of rain), and solemn drum rolls (Beggar's Blues). The voice, hoarse and sublime, is always at the forefront, above everything else, reciting lyrics that, compared to the debut three years prior, are more expansive even if poetically sparse and direct.

Probably the highest peak of his production, "Whiskey For The Holy Ghost" may be the true debut of Lanegan the artist, an emphatic noir storyteller, with an absolutely indisputable class.