Mark Lanegan is what the late Bill Hicks wouldve called a six-lighters-a-day man, sounding not only like he smokes cigarettes by the truckload, but eats the ashtrays too. When coupled with the heavy psychedelia of his former band the Screaming Trees, his ocean-deep, molasses-thick baritone resulted in sonic assaults of seismic proportions.
However, his solo work has ploughed a very different furrow of bible-black backwoods folk and whiskey-soaked blues, a course from which Field Songs, his fifth release under his own name, shows no sign of straying.
Opening track One Way Street, with its brushed drums, woozy reverb and flamenco guitar, sounds like procession music for a sweltering Mexican festival of the dead, while No Easy Action, with its stomping Middle Eastern vibe, is a dead ringer for Love Of Life-era Swans.
Its an album full of doomed gothic romance, pharmaceutical and drunken reverie, and blurry, sepia snapshots of friends and lovers long since gone, almost every track shot through with a quietly murderous malevolence.
On Miracle, when Lanegan sings, I need someone for my plaything, he makes it seem less like a heartfelt plea than a statement of devilish intent. Meanwhile, on Low, with his dust-blown crooning backed by a forlorn Hammond organ, Lanegan manages to sound utterly heroic yet so completely lost, all at the same time.
Short of a free crate of sourmash and a personal bedtime lullaby from that angel of anhedonia herself, Chan Marshall, youll be pressed to find anything more tempting than Field Songs all year.