Mark Lanegan solo album recommendations... (RIP February 2022)

The first time that I ever truly 'heard' him, back in 1993, guesting on this Walkabouts cover of Charlie Rich (and thus also consciously introducing me to his work):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGZeVkAE16k

Been sitting with me all day since the news hit. As well as this -- from The Winding Sheet in 1990, with Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, so no surprise where Nirvana got the idea to do this later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbXrgGpvPeU

Such a damn shame.

Good, honest tribute:

https://jaybabcock.substack.com/p/landline-in-the-fade

I liked Mark, I liked his music. And I liked him because he loved music so much. It wasn’t just psychedelic rock or garage-punk stuff, it was every category. Blues, soul, jazz, classic rock, reggae, underground rock, art rock, contemporary electronic music. He was omnivorous, wide-ranging. He was a huge Kinks fan! He’d done a record with Beat Happening! He had a collaboration in progress with Greg Dulli, another one with Isobel Campbell from Belle & Sebastian! And in those early ‘00s years, he was in what at that time was the best rock ‘n’ roll band in the world, a band he didn’t have to lead.

Which was important, because Lanegan was so unusual: he was a natural singer who was not a natural frontman. He seemed far from at ease onstage, usually just squinting and standing stockstill, holding onto the mic for dear life. He was not a showman. Didn't matter. His voice was so rich, and the material clearly meant so much to him, that it worked.

his covers are so so good, such a vast array of genres

this one sends me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbMbeG1jIQU

RIP

Love this

Mark Lanegan toured with Oasis once. It didn't go great... pic.twitter.com/NnSn4vJ4JO

— Phil Harrison (@MrPMHarrison) February 22, 2022

fuck this is awful :(

Looking forward to reading this when it arrives. Shame there isn't going to be a lot more coming. Could have been interesting to have around as a writer in his old age.
Glad i did getto see him fronting Screaming Trees at the LSE but do wish I had seen him more frequently.

Saw him twice. Once solo around 1995 and once with the Trees - the tour when Homme was playing guitar. Both times it was summer (such as it is in the UK) and both times he was in a hat and a jacket (and dark glasses obviously) and seemed not uncomfortable as such but something like it - a point of stillness at the centre of things, around which everything pivoted.

i think the piece that Ned linked upthread nails it, that he didnt like being a “frontman” or being on stage, but he truly loved to sing

not uncomfortable as such but something like it - a point of stillness at the centre of things

Only time I saw him live was with QOTSA in probably 2003 and thats a perfect description of what it felt like. not hiding onstage exactly, but not on the same frequency as everything else around him, like a spectral presence with his own slightly different gravity.

this is one i go back to a lot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsT8yD1MCJk

JUst realised wish the title of this song was more apt or possibly so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UzhqjsW4wo

Ned, thanks for posting my piece.

Yeah that Jay Babcock tribute was lovely. I had no idea that Bubblegum era EP even existed! Dean Ween! Given how much I love the album, I need to track that thing down.

the last time I saw him live was this session in a radio studio, on (checks that date twice... yes...) February 22 2012.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJz5c2f4ERQ

this is a really beautiful remembrance… am unfamiliar w the writer (Neill Jameson) but i love how personal it is

https://www.invisibleoranges.com/the-gravediggers-song-rip-mark-lanegan/

xpost - that was very moving Jay, excellent writing and perspective

Lovely blog post jay. Thanks for sharing Ned.

Yeah, thanks for sharing Jay. I hadn't caught that you'd just posted right before me.

Also a lovely post VegemiteGirl. Damn, this is hitting really hard.

someone mentioned Bubblegum by Mark Lanegan Band upthread and this is a fantastic album! perfect mix of his moody thing with heavier stuff

not many could get PJ Harvey and Izzy Stradlin on the same album

unearthing all of his collaborations i havent heard has been a bittersweet positive

turns out Mark also understood that PINK FLOYD RULES - killer cover of nobody’s home w Alain Johannes from 2018 “The Wall (redux)” comp


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a458vn1J1n0

xpost yeah bubblegum is excellent

Saw him with the Queens in 2001 (R tour) and as the Mark Lanegan Band in 2004 (Bubblegum tour), he was never less than amazing to watch, a point of stillness at the centre of things is a great way to put it. Bubblegum and esp. the preceding EP, Here Comes That Weird Chill (which I eluded to back up here in 2004) are some of my favourite origingal Lanegan releases. I especially loved the production on the EP, there’s a rawness to it that I often miss in other releases, which are sometimes sounding a bit hermetic, imo. There’s so much collaborative stuff I haven’t heard though, catching up on those. His 2019 collaboration, Downwelling, with Not Waving (as Dark Mark (now that’s an alias) is a personal favourite.

I remember him at that LSE show moving his fingers at the mic stand like he was playing double bass. Wonder if that was something he made a habit of.

i know i have posted re my love re this production crew here and there on ilm,
however, when the results end up like this, then i have no regrets.
in my world, mark provided the best vocals they ever had.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErmJa3MBI10

I never got to see him with the Trees (iirc), but I got to see him with Isobel Campbell, with the QOTSA, with Greg Dulli, and that really says it all. His voice worked wonders in lots of contexts.

mark e. — YES. I've had that one on repeat more than anything else. Open arms.

unearthing all of his collaborations i havent heard has been a bittersweet positive

A compilation -- no, a full box set -- of all the astounding one-offs and tribute comp appearances and everything else would be so welcome. Hell I was reminded of this the other day -- he takes a Marc Almond song that was originally a duet with Nico (her last formal recording IIRC), sings it with Beth Orton and while keeping all the melodrama of the original heightens it by default into a Lee and Nancy song from hell:

https://soundcloud.com/heavenlyrecordings/your-kisses-burn-mark-lanegan-beth-orton

i made a youtube playlist of some of my favorite stuff plus tons of stuff i discovered these past couple of days

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLHnyDe_1GTvcILl3Z2MTTUBXigxer4gx

there’s no reason for this “November Rain” cover w Nicole Atkins to work but lord i believe it does

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee6eI1P7IvY

vegemite — I've been making a playlist too, I'll check out yours soon. Just came across this now. He looks like a man truly at the end of his tether but he somehow goes all the way on the vocal. Beautiful/heartbreaking to hear the final refrain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvQ5FgcLveo

heartbreaking

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/feb/24/you-were-my-heathcliff-isobel-campbell-pays-tribute-to-collaborator-mark-lanegan

Apologies if somebody else has posted this already. I think this is the way I want to sit with his music, and his spirit, for a while. For whatever reason, here he seems calm and bemused while being asked the usual interview questions, live on the air, and then completely focused on singing the most lovely/loving songs — especially the closer which is essentially Lanegan doing a lullaby of the standard Reaching for the Moon. This is the rare event where Lanegan has his eyes open (sometimes, just a bit) while singing. I swear he is close to tears.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKzkAYZtCE

Reaching for the Moon, only

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPf8B2FBWmc

One Mr. Cave

Lovely tribute to Mark Lanegan from Nick Cave on his Red Hand Files email today (definitely worth subscribing to). pic.twitter.com/ulv6Vl8Da3

— Ted Kessler (@TedKessler1) February 25, 2022

<3

that Brompton Oratory cover he mentions is really something . The original is one of my favorite alltime Cave tracks, Lanegan sings it so beautifully

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrG7t2kgM0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvtRyyhvOtQ

Lovely words from the other week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNfiYwbhFyw

Meantime, I took my piece on seven interpretations of others' songs he did from behind the Patreon paywall. They're all amazing.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/seven-by-mark-63087735

hey, I don't know if there are any screaming trees megafanz here, but I found this press photo earlier when I was digging through my stacks - yell if you want it! think it was in a review copy of 'Even If...' which I don't have anymore

https://i.ibb.co/LJCJRmn/PXL-20220302-210055371-2.jpg

aw that is so sweet
thank you for posting!!

yeah, they're pretty young there - van conner must be about 20 or something like that? btw my ilx-mail doesn't work, so if anyone does want it just shout at me here

A few days ago I downloaded a sample of ML's memoir because unfortunately I had snoozed on his excellent writing. I am reading about the early days of the band and it's fun to put a face to a name.

i think that's mark pickerel on the left then van conner at the front and gary lee behind him

The baby has to be Pickerel

i went back & re-listened to the early Trees albums, they are really great. I think my favorite is Clairvoyance. First three or four albums definitely have a heavy throwback psychedelia/garage vibe. First album is that in its purest form imo, very Sonics, at times reminds me of Electric Prunes, just a bunch of 20 year olds making music & having fun. It’s cool & they are fucking great.

Intersting the different quality to Lanegan’s voice, he’s in a Jim Morrison lane here & hasn’t yet plumbed down into the baritonal depths of later Trees & solo career. More energetic YAYUH stuff, he sounds so good but its exciting in that unformed, “doesn’t know what he is yet” kinda way.
Youthful, obviously, too which is also fun to hear from a guy who has sounded older than his years for a long time.

Intersting the different quality to Lanegan’s voice, he’s in a Jim Morrison lane here & hasn’t yet plumbed down into the baritonal depths of later Trees & solo career.

He told me that during this era he'd walk offstage every night with a headache from trying to sing songs written in a register other than his. He was really sour on the early Trees stuff, and didn't sweeten on it when he wrote his memoir. But I love those records; they aren't the equal of Sweet Oblivion or Dust, but they are fantastic garage rock - In The Forest and Back Together have this excellent proto-punk energy, End Of The Universe has that thundercrack second riff towards the end that Jack White later half-inched, Cold Rain is just a fantastic pop song. And Grey Diamond Desert is just this majestic, slow, shimmering thing. That's the song where whatever Lanegan was going to become first surfaces.

For those with an interest in young Screaming Trees, The Fertilichrome Cheerleader Massacre has been released on youtube since last I checked!

Trailers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwDD8f-LiCE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIWDbWjuVu0

Full movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqghby05ImU

This whole session is great, they also cover The End and Tales Of Great Ulysses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjzmOquIP8g