Mark Lanegan Band: Blues Funeral

He’s come to reanimate the blues, not to bury it.

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Of all Mark Lanegan’s many and varied collaborations since his last solo album Bubblegum in 2004 – with Isobel Campbell on Ballad Of Broken Seas, Greg Dulli in The Gutter Twins and The Twilight Singers, and as a cameo player in Queens Of The Stone Age – it’s his work with electro pioneers UNKLE and Soulsavers in 2009 that most inform this seventh solo outing.

As a man drawn instinctively to the hanging tree and swampy burial ground, Lanegan drenches Blues Funeral in imagery straight from the voodoo bayou – the piranha teeth, the blood in muddy water, the hot lives and sticky liquor – but The Gravedigger’s Song, Quiver Syndrome, Riot In My House and the backward-looping Tiny Grain Of Truth are Deep South elegies driven by sinister synthetics and brooding electronic beats worthy of Primal Scream, while Ode To Sad Disco is virtually a sadistic Scissor Sisters.

Which all makes for a riveting revitalisation of swamp rock – less a wake for the blues, more a modernist resuscitation.

Mark Beaumont

Mark Beaumont is a music journalist with almost three decades' experience writing for publications including Classic Rock, NME, The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Times, Uncut and Melody Maker. He has written major biographies on Muse, Jay-Z, The Killers, Kanye West and Bon Iver and his debut novel [6666666666] is available on Kindle (opens in new tab).