MLB: single blooms into an astonishing EP

Most days bring new music only to confirm that the progressive trivialisation continues as if the only thing the majors are interested and capable of handling. Looking at the release schedules one cannot but feel that the new period of Pop’s Dark Ages has been entered and we are trekking to even deeper levels, all the way to the banks of Styx.

Mark Lanegan Band’s ‘Here Comes That Weird Chill (Metamphethamine Blues, Extras & Oddities)’ arrives like a rain after a long draught. The strangest thing is that this was supposed to be a single only, culled from the forthcoming album, ‘Bubblegum’, not due out for another six months. It’s been expended to an 8 track EP with the inclusion of outtakes from the album sessions and few other goodies.

‘Extras’ these are but ‘Oddities’ are not, unless you consider the quality: more like ‘Rarities‘. This man, once The Screaming Tree leader and a member of the Queens Of The Stone Age, certainly knows inspiration and had imagination to craft songs that are tense, peculiar, lopsided and exciting to discover over and again. If there’s a single rule, than it is that mind’s eye is let to explore the divinely mysterious and dark corners of souls, the ones lost in the commercial jungle, and haul them back into the light.

One of the ‘Rarities’ is a succulent cover of Captain Beefheart’s ‘Clear Spot’ [title cut from the 1972 LP], followed by a new song, ‘Skeletal History’, which was written by Lanegan and his QotSA band-mates, Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri, an exquisite ‘extra’. The EP opens with an industrial, clanging beauty - imagine Nick Cave fronting Eisturzende Neubauten with Can-like subversive-melody - entitled ‘Methamphetamine Blues’ that is punctuated by Homme’s stunning guitar work.

Homme also provides few drum-sittings and some bass/rhythm guitar - appearing on five tracks in total - with The Twilight Singers [and former Afghan Whigs] mainman Gregg Dulli and Dean of Ween among other guests. There is also a ninth, uncredited cut, that brings this magical sounding songs’ timing to just over 30 minutes.

Mark Lanegan continues to deliver his own brand of tonal paradigm and there is nothing to divert him from his songsmiths-manship. The man, by all accounts, could have been a megastar if he only made the follow-up to The Trees’ ‘Dust’ (1996) but he valiantly decided that his creative liberty and artistic integrity are worth more than any fame, fat bank account and dividing his life between splendid isolation in a Hollywood mansion and hanging out with fellow ‘stars’.

All one can do is take off a flat-cap in full-on respect.

8/10
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Tour dates:

25 November - Cathouse, Glasgow
26 November - Academy 3, Manchester
27 November - Academy 2, Birmingham
28 November - Mean Fiddler, London