Forty-track anniversary boxset expands on the source LP’s story The urge to disentangle certain charismatic artists from the mythos that clings to them is as eternally irresistible as it is futile. Interviews and memoirs are useful for this only if the subject/narrator is 100% reliable; the internet, teeming with wild opinions and purported truths, is no place to look for verification. Which is why a combination of cultural romanticism and institutionalised trust still has us looking to an artist’s songs for clues as to who they “really” are.
As someone drawn to the dark side – well documented, not least of all in his unflinching autobiography – is often the subject of “authentic self or projected character?” enquiry, as if the entire value of his recordings post- rests on the answer. It’s an odd thing to ask of someone who didn’t exactly burn through a wide range of personas in their career and barely tweaked their artistic expression. If Lanegan’s years of sombre reflection, the bleak and unshowy poeticism of his lyrics and borderline uncomfortable live performances point to anything, it’s hardly a carefully constructed other.
Talking to about his writing process in 2012, he said, “I always start from some personal place. Some [albums] are more fictional, some are more based on reality, but they all do start from something real.” As for the vast majority of artists, then, so for Lanegan, who steps metaphorically into the spotlight again with this all-formats reissue of his sixth album, .
It lands as a 20th-anniversary release that includes an expanded 2003 EP , a 13-track and (in the 4LP boxset) a 64-page hardcover book featuring memorial essays by confreres including , , and . Released under the name and co-produced by Johannes and , sits between the bare-boned, almost rootsy and the drum machine- and synths-augmented mixed bag that is . In his book , Lanegan revealed the dark turmoil of s genesis: “I had been awake for days and nights, crazed from no sleep and illegal stimulants.
While I had been out of my mind making records in the past, this was a new peak...
or low, depending on one’s perspective.” Mixer Rick Will compared the experience to a scene from , while it caused Lanegan’s manager, , to quit before the record was finished. However tortuous the process, though, the tenebrous self at the centre of certainly enthrals, portrayed in a mix of first-person narrative, potent metaphor and flash-card imagery, against a backdrop of haunted blues, charged alt.
rock, country and grunge, flecked with psychedelia. The record also clearly shows the influence of , whose Homme, Johannes and Van Leeuwen all make major contributions of a resolutely gnarly and turbo-charged kind. “ ” As album openers go, “ ” is quite the establishing shot – a stark portrait of drug addiction and the singular hell endured by those existing on the knife edge between life and death, set to a soundtrack of cavernous, slow-mo beats, shivering droplets of piano and a lugubrious organ motif.
“The night porter” was ’s nickname for Mark Lanegan, due to his willingness to deliver dope in the small hours, and deemed so fitting it appears on the latter’s gravestone. Lanegan may have been that netherworld stalker, but it hardly defines him: with the roaring “ ”, one of two songs here featuring , he exudes the escapee’s mix of relief and awareness that the promised land seldom delivers, while both “ ”, a -style shimmer of psychedelic gospel soul and the strikingly spare intimacy of “ ”, which just scrapes over the one-minute mark, show him as the defeated lover at the end of a turbulent relationship. In the poignant and languorous “ ”, Lanegan is both the optimist high on hopes of what the future could hold and the realist who knows it’s not for him.
There’s a sudden mood switch with “ ”, a trashy, punk-pop charge centred on compulsion and bad decisions, which is twin to the pedal-to-the-metal squall of “ ”, where Lanegan is behind the wheel, impelled by addictions to both love and “medicine”. The additional discs in this boxsetare solid inclusions, albeit with different functions. Necessarily less revealing is the EP of songs recorded at the same time as those that comprise and released the year before.
It sees Greg Dulli and joining Homme, Johannes and , among other players, and since it’s often passed over in any appreciation of Lanegan’s catalogue, it’s worthy of a dust-off. Notable are the fragmentary, almost hallucinatory “ ”, a cover of ’s “ ” – no great stretch for anyone here, perhaps, but a satisfyingly gruff, rough-necked hammering with some fine guitar vamps – and the blasted, desert-rock workout that is “ ”. Three bonus tracks feature – “ ”, previously only available on the anthology and the two flips of “Hit The City”, “ ” and “ ”.
The first of those is a raucous stomper with a -y thread running through, the other a tender, -like rumination on love’s perception errors, for fingerpicked acoustic guitar and close-mic’d voice. As is so often the case with reissue extras, the punctum of is its unreleased songs and demos. One disc features seven outtakes from the original sessions plus half a dozen tracks Leeuwen recorded with Lanegan in various hotel rooms during downtime on QOTSA’s tours of Japan and Australia, in February 2003.
Chief among the outtakes is the breezy, largely acoustic “ ”, which now features a newly recorded Beck on harmonica. This collaboration was part of Lanegan’s original plan, but for various logistical reasons at the time, it didn’t pan out. Here, by the sourcing of song stems over 20 years after he wrote it, that’s been rectified.
The hotel sessions see Leeuwen playing all instruments, while Lanegan’s unvarnished vocals are the focus. The fact that these recordings survive in their original rough mixes is surprising in itself – “nobody knew those existed and [Troy] forgot about them,” Klein tells – but they are strikingly intimate and pack an understatedly powerful emotional punch. The standouts here are a charming cover of ’s “ ” (a first-time recording), the Appalachian folk-flavoured “St James Infirmary” and the penultimate “ ”, a terrific shortened version of ’s “ ”.
Here, Lanegan’s voice, thickened and so close the moisture in his mouth is almost palpable, is at its most tenderly haunting, as against the sparest acoustic guitar he croons, “ ” It may be a projective stretch to claim that Lanegan is drawing a direct parallel between his own life and that of a black, R&B-soul singer who died aged 30 in prison while serving time for manslaughter, not least of all because the song is largely a lament to lost love, but Lanegan’s compassion is writ large as his despair. He certainly had no need to piggyback on another’s tragedy for the sake of authenticity. not only amplifies its maker’s profile as a heavy hitter in his artistic field, it reveals a newly raw expression of his life and particular times.
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