It has been mentioned elsewhere that Tramp occasionally resembles the work of Mark Lanegan, but I’m amazed at how subtly and how well this occurs.  From the off, Warsaw has The Winding Sheet’s unadorned guitar riffs backs with eerie washes of distortion and feedback reminiscent of Mike Johnson’s atmospheric work.  Even when the drums kick in, it sounds like 1990 all over again, The National’s Aaron Dessner capturing Lanegan/Johnson/Endino’s mesmerizing blues/folk/indie hybrid perfectly and reverentially.

This is not to say that just because the spirit is there, the result is similar: far from it, for as soon as Sharon Van Etten’s voice is added to the equation, the whole thing goes into a place that is hers and hers alone.  It’s not a warm, fuzzy place either – even the optimistically-titled and almost-cheerfully played We Are Fine (one of two vocal collaborations with Beirut’s Zach Condon) smacks of that pre-breakup desperation to convince amongst a collection of songs that tell of disintegrated and destructive relationships gazed upon with sorrow, wistfulness and occasionally anger (the latter displayed in an especially, erm, venomous Serpents), although the way that the songs are played and sung, the majority emotion here seems to be a detached fondness.

This half-smiling recollection in Sharon’s songwriting and performance comes across akin to 4AD’s early ethereal stable, in particular Red House Painters’ first two self-titled albums (almost literally during the midset In Line) in terms of depth of feeling and cathartic execution of each song.  The words may be sad, but the music soars, carried by a lead vocal that has to be said is rather astonishing.  It’s hard to pick out favourites from a set that demands to be listened from start to finish every time without pause, but at a push I’m gravitating towards the aforementioned Warsaw and In Line for their slight familiarity, and the upwardly-spiralling closing brace of I’m Wrong and Joke Or A Lie.

Like all good melancholia, the sadness evoked comes across as utterly genuine and heartfelt and yet is put across to the listener as a positive force.  Not in any cheesy sense of “ooh, share in my woe and you shall also be miserable”, but instead with a sense of “yeah, it was tough, but here I am and here it is, I’m feeling OK” that can only make the audience feel somewhat better for listening in.  In my usual “late to the party” state, this is the first I’ve heard of Sharon Van Etten’s work, this being her third record (first on the increasingly lovely Jagjaguwar), thankfully it’s payday tomorrow – or, as I like to call it, in about 20 minutes – so I’ll be doing my best to catch up.  Until then, my newly-acquired Bad Brains tribute album and Pump Up The Volume soundtrack CD  (nope, I’ve no idea either) will remain shrinkwrapped to within an inch of their lives.  Tramp is one of those rare records from a rare talent that I know I’ll be playing a long time from now.

Also planning on adding an extra category, as “From the Past” and “From the Present” is all well and lovely, but what of old stuff that I’ve only just bought/dug?  So, at some point (ish), a “New To Me” thingy may well appear.

 Shearwater – Dread Sovereign (Demo version)

Courtesy of the lovely people at Sub Pop Records, the pre-order for Shearwater’s Animal Joy album was preceded by a collection of demo versions of five of the album’s songs.  The final album hasn’t quite reached me yet (hopefully tomorrow – review when it does get here), so these stripped-down appetizers are sufficing rather nicely.  This one seems to get played more than the others thanks to Jonathan Meiburg’s impassioned 2-word chorus and the overall skill in making a simple rhythm and chord progression with just guitar, drum and voice sound so huge.

Creature With the Atom Brain – Hit the Sky

Taken from their upcoming album and put out as a free download track this week, Hit The Sky shows CWTAB with a more post-punk sound – particularly in the verses – over the top of their more familiar psych-rock roots, the latter of which flourishes in the instrumental passages.  If this is an indication of the current direction of Aldo Struyff’s band, it’s one that’s well-worth looking forward to.  Creature With The Atom Brain will be supporting Mark Lanegan on his European tour (as well as donating a couple of members to Mark’s own onstage ensemble), it’s advised that you turn up early to catch these guys.  Have an aural gander yourselves here.

Thee Oh Sees – I Need Seed

From an album that didn’t make my Top Fifty of last year, it’s started to grow on me quite nicely of late thanks to an album cover that I can’t help but love.  I Need Seed seems to be a tale concerning the woes of modern-day soil (told in whatever the soil equivalent of a first-person perspective might be), recorded in the very lowest of fi and all coming across like Beat Happening in their very best mood.

Radiohead – The Daily Mail

In a week where our nation’s most-read and most-hated rag compares the actions of our partially-ruling party to the Nazis (and with the DM’s own illustrious record in these matters, they’re perfectly-positioned to know), now’s a good idea to revisit this recent single.  Recorded during the sessions that brought us the strange and occasionally brilliant King Of Limbs, The Daily Mail feels as if it would be more at home on The Bends, especially in the Just-echoing second half.  That it still sounds bang up-to-date is testament to how good The Bends was in the first place.

Ned’s Atomic Dustbin – Legoland

More double-bassed tomfoolery from Stourbridge, and a band that features quite often and happily in the background of whatever it is I do during the day.  And while I’m wandering around an freight terminal trying to look busy, bouncy and somewhat wounded lyrics about being “one brick short of Legoland” take me back to a world of weekdays spent at various Manchester indie nitespots and weekends of worryingly-coloured jelly where Blue Bols was used instead of water during preparation with admittedly mixed results.  Now that’s something you’d never hear on Desert Island Discs.

Nomeansno – The Day Everything Became Nothing

Canada’s favourite rhythmic siblings pipe up here with a strange non-apocalyptic tale set to something that sounds like a manic, bass-heavy reworking of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song.  This is the boiled-down essence of Nomeansno: Punk ferocity alongside an utter madness unavailable anywhere else.  Ooh, and a funky midsection that exemplifies why the Wright brothers’ telepathic sense of timing and ear for making something loud and fun is the envy of any right-minded musician in any genre.

Mega City Four – Severance

More delvings into an almost-forgotten past here, from an EP bought on a whim on a work lunchtime and whose melodic post-hardcore, post-breakup bitterness and bravado has all the surface hallmarks of the titular separation.   Which would be fine and dandy in itself, but running right through it is that desperation to convince oneself that the words are meant and heartfelt rather than face the possible truth that the severance of the song is to one heart rather than between two people.  Angry, romantic confusion never sounded so sweet.

Blitzen Trapper – Below The Hurricane

One of those tracks that manages to sound like an instant classic, mostly because it sounds like all the other ones rolled into one and reworked to make a whole new one.  To be honest, I’m still finding my way around Blitzen Trapper and their blend of very American folk-rock, I tend to find that whenever I get a bit lost in it all, this is a great point to return to and branch out from all over again.

Mark Lanegan Band – Tiny Grain of Truth

The epic closer to his new solo album – which in itself maybe tells a tale or two.  Mark Lanegan’s work, even at his most eloquent and gentle, has never been especially epic in nature.  Tiny Grain of Truth calls forth a host from the depths (firewalker, neon priest, junky doctor, shadow king)  and sends them out, conjuring and then abjuring them starkly “in black and white”.  The entire Blues Funeral album takes on a shift in tense compared to his previous works, hints of “was” instead of “is” in his dark recollections.  Tiny Grain of Truth is a song that bucks that trend, using its epic tone to portray the beginnings of an ascension by showing that he has control of those that seemingly once had control of him.  This has the hallmarks of a song that will brighten many dark corners for a long time to come.

Red House Painters – Shadows

If there’s one thing that the Red House Painters did better than anyone else, it was the unflinching ability to peer into the most awful, uncomfortable moments of love, and then make something achingly beautiful from them.  Shadows sings of the saddest part of a relationship: where one half doesn’t understand the other anymore, it all starts to unravel and everything takes on this awful inevitability.  All set to a calm, patient, beautiful tune that belies the turmoil.  So yeah, not the cheeriest song in the world, but it was never meant to be.

The last one I did of these was when a bunch of Manchester-based recording artists got together to make a charity record (the wonderful and worthy Manchester Music For Kosovo), and by curious coincidence, this next one is another gathering of Manchester’s great and good coming together for another charitable cause.  CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) is an organisation set up to help combat the high rates of suicide among young men in the UK, and this 2-disc compilation has been compiled by local author and DJ Dave Haslam, involving names right across the spectrum of Manchester’s unique collection of contemporary artists, with art direction from local icon Peter Saville, all put out by the Factory Foundation, another charitable organisation concerned with providing music workshops for the area’s disadvantaged children.

As a statement of what this album is about and what the charity wants to achieve is perfectly put across by Elbow’s introduction to, and live performance of, Lippy Kids - a celebratory song about how we shouldn’t demonize the youth for doing what we once did.  Elsewhere throughout the 31 songs on offer, big-hitters such as Bad Lieutenant, Noel Gallagher’s High-Flying Birds, the aforementioned Elbow and Mr Scruff rub shoulders with the city’s post-punk elder statesmen such as Durutti Column, A Certain Ratio’s Jez Kerr and Magazine’s Barry Adamson, and a whole host of emerging and locally established talent – some I know (I Am Kloot, Jim Noir, Dutch Uncles, The Travelling Band) and many that I previously didn’t.

Although the selections here cover a rather broad church, there’s still something altogether Mancunian about the whole thing – almost every entry here is unified by a pride tempered with a certain slight edge of general Northern grimness respectfully in keeping with the environs.  That’s not to say that anything here is miserable, far from it – the Travelling Band for instance create a cheerful singalong out of it with Rise Fast, Fall Slow, and the astonishing refugee collective Beating Wing Orchestra bring their own multicultural perspective to the place with their Japanese-sung Sama.

Highlights I guess depends on whatever floats your boat, although I’m sure that most music fans will find that whatever they paid for this compilation (there are three price points depending on means and charitable indisposition) easily covers enough favourites to warrant a purchase.  Particular highlights for me include the aforementioned Beating Wing Orchestra and Travelling Band tracks, Jim Noir’s characterful psychedelic lounge whimsy Spider Glider, The Janice Graham Band’s angry ska of Murder and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds closing the musical proceedings with the stunning (and I say this as someone not generally a fan) Let The Lord Shine A Light On Me.  The thirty-first entrant on this collection is three and a half minutes of silence – which may seem a bit strange, but in this age of skipping straight to the next thing without pause for thought, quietly contemplating the reasons for this album’s existence makes perfect sense.

The album’s out now.

Read more and buy it here.

CALM’s website

The Factory Foundation’s Website

“I’ve obviously seen it close up with my own beloved lead singer taking his life so tragically in 1980. Then it seemed unique and specially awful; my work with CALM has shown me that these tragedies are all too common, almost everyday; and in so many cases all for the lack of someone on the other end of a phone line.”A. H. Wilson, Factory Records, CALM Trustee

Take this for example:

 

Yes, it’s a bloke using a Cymbalta antidepressant capsule as a tiny percussive backing instrument on his album.  As you do.  Why this grabbed my attention so, is explained thusly: I have had huge problems with antidepressants in the past, although in fairness, it was more the reason for them being given to me that was (and remains) the actual problem.  They didn’t help me.  Not one iota.  What they did was turn me into a rather unfeeling, uncaring monster that was so devoid of the ability to express any sort of emotion that I lost everything that was dear to me.  And yet I still took them.  I stopped fifteen or so years ago, but the cravings to slip into old habits remain strong and have for the past couple of years have loomed somewhat large on the horizon, which is something that really annoys me.

This little video has had the effect on me of shrinking what I thought was a huge worry down to, well, a very small maraca.  This isn’t to trivialise anything, but really helped me put certain things into a certain perspective and took a huge weight from my shoulders (albeit probably only temporarily).  Thanks.

And, after all that, on with the actual record.  Mike Doughty is one of those artists that always seemed to have been at the periphery of whatever I was listening to without admittedly being a focus of it – the closest our paths had previously crossed was via his former band Soul Coughing’s collaboration with Roni Size on the rather mad soundtrack to the rather awful Spawn movie.  His name (and video above) once more came to my attention through various postings from a friend, and now that it’s released over here (it came out during the summer of last year in the former colonies) I thought I’d give it a whirl.

From the off, the upbeat and airy tunes, clean vocals and slightly mournful underpinning of Na Na Nothing transport me instantly to a burgeoning 1990s American Indie reminiscence: a relaxed Bob Mould perhaps, with a sprinkling of Buffalo Tom and phrasing & lyrical sensibilities of a less caustic Samiam.  This ’90s vibe is an undercurrent well and widely explored, the ultra-laidback hip-hop croonings of Day By Day By harken back to a time when De La Soul and Arrested Development breezed through people’s collective consciousness, and in a slightly more literal vein, Russell‘s lyrics quoting of old computer programming languages.

Far from sounding dated, it all comes across as being bang up-to-date thanks to Mike’s ear for a tune and eye on the here and now, as well as occasionally pushed further back as with Have At It, a manic keyboard backing an electrified Dylan call to arms and the German-sung Makelloser Mann (Immaculate Man, according to the internet) calling forth the spirit of Kling Klang Studio with a curious Munsteresque organ lurking just behind.  This “things behind the things” approach to arrangement is something that turns up a lot during Yes And Also Yes, giving extra depth and surprising layers to melodies that, thanks to Mike’s clear delivery and the record’s crisp production, initially seem straightforward.

It’s certainly a HappySad record, but the emphasis is firmly on the Happy side due in no small part to the times and places conjured from each song in this set, the conviction that this is the exact record that Mike Doughty wanted to make  when it was written, performed and put together.  Even at its most reflective and wistful it’s fun to listen to because of the fondness Mike puts in his voice to each chosen subject, and even without the prescription percussion, it’s a brightening cathartic experience that this listener sorely needed to hear.

So it was nice to have the mundanity scuppered by the surprise arrival of this record from Seattle’s YB’s, a band I know next to nothing about (let alone what the YB stands for) making music that largely defies a cohesive description.  Of course, I could read and relate the info that accompanied this, but I always feel that doing so is cheating slightly, as well as ruining the surprise…

From the off, it’s very clear that YB’s have found a spiritual haven in Strange Earth Records.  Altered Steaks sits well with Strange Earth’s apparent ethos of celebrating big riffs with an eye out for any excuse to go and hang out in the musical peripheries rather than just play it straight, which can only ever be a good thing.  YB’s approach this with aplomb, taking their influences and variously wearing them on their sleeves or bending them around each other to make something altogether different.

The first three tracks are a good indication of what to expect throughout, by being initially rather baffling.  Lincoln Log opens with a fat Black Sabbath beat and swampy ZZ Top vocals (the latter a feature that appears throughout, also reminiscent of a latter-day, lower register Marc  Beidermann of Blind Illusion, himself no stranger to doing odd things with classic rock).  Chainsaw Love replaces the big guitars with muddy keyboard funk, and Dorado pushes the envelope further by completely spacing out the vocals almost to the  point of monologue over an accompaniment that happily ploughs its own cosmic furrow in the background.

In short, it’s probably not unfair to say that YB’s give the deliberate impression that if they were any more laid-back they may well fall over, which is something that can only be properly pulled-off if all involved were able to keep a tight rein on the off-kilter fun that they’re creating by being very good at what they do.  They’re also not worried about changing tack to showcase their talents, going from the Iggy Pop/Spiders From Mars collaboration of Steak City to a Tom Waits lament in Highway 99 and the very ZZ Top heavy boogie of Rusty Trombone (complete with some great midsection mouth-tromboning, which is impossible to convey in type without sounding like something awful), again all in the space of three tracks.  The last three tracks consist of more swampy boogie in the form of Orcas with the added bonus of a spot of late ’80s hip-hop scratching (good grief that makes me sound like an unhip Dad), an 8-minute epic groove in Haunter Of The Dark (NGBA) and the relaxed closer of La Push, which reminds me of the loose jams of their label boss’s Gardener project.

I keep mentioning things in threes in regard to this album, probably because the way that my head’s working at the moment is to look for patterns in seemingly unrelated collections of stuff.  That the best I could come up with in these patterns is that “yeah, they’re all a bit different really” is equally praise for YB’s ability to cram as much as possible into their debut as well my own uselessness at anything remotely approaching proper analysis.  It does hold together remarkably well for all of its initially disparate elements, making for a consistently interesting and surprising album.  Here’s hoping that they continue in this cheerily eccentric vein.

Altered Steaks is available digitally from tomorrow, or if you’re in the UK, about half an hour ago.  More info from Strange Earth’s website, a mere click away from here.

110 years on from its original viewings, a restored colour print (that itself has taken almost twenty years to reconstruct, frame by frame) is now available, and it has been soundtracked by Georges Méliès’ French compatriots Air, who give the 14-minute 1902 work of art a fun and gently reverential polish.

Thankfully, the posh version of this soundtrack CD comes with a DVD of the restored and rescored film so that we can actually sit all the way through a film that many of us have heard of but never actually sat down and watched from start to finish, as well as soaking in Air’s new soundtrack.  In the context of the film, it fits really well – the film is obviously silent, and rather than go the subtle modern soundscapes that back today’s films, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel have taken the spirit of the age and applied their own retro-modernist style to it: where early 20th-Century theatres would show films accompanied by a pianist providing cues as the story unfolded, Air apply an equally literal approach (as seen early on, where the music matches three workers hammering away at an anvil) with a largely electronic score that at times feels like a 1990s Japanese Role-Playing videogame but nonetheless fits the onscreen imaginations perfectly.

The full album embellishes these themes to the nth degree, sounding ever-so-slightly Yellow Magic Orchestra in their upbeat numbers, completely otherworldly in their mellower excursions.  The latter is wonderfully explored in Moon Fever, sounding like Yoshitaka Hirota at his calmest, and the magnificent Seven Stars with Victoria Legrand from Beach House adding vocals to something that I’m sure will be among my favourite songs at the end of this year.  The more upbeat entries are best represented by the album’s 5-minute centrepiece Sonic Armada which manages, through arrangement and choice of sound, to have a foot in several decades all at the same time, and Cosmic Trip, which sounds just like a song with that title really should.

The feel throughout is of a creation of a somewhat manic epic, of using the unexpected to make something that fires and accompanies the imagination – an apt way to approach the record given that the film’s director made 555 weird and wonderful films in a thirteen-year period (almost all of which are sadly lost, which is a shame when faced with such tantalizing titles as The Count’s Wooing, For Sale: A Baby, The Duke’s Good Joke, Mexican As It Is Spoken, and – my personal fave – Hydrotherapie Fantastique).  At 31 minutes, the album is twice as long as the film that inspired it and not quite as long as I’d have liked given the places that the very concept of both film and record take me.  It may not necessarily be to everyone’s taste, but anyone with a sense of cinema history or just with a taste for something a bit quirky will find plenty to drift into here.

Our usual trick is to employ as many different SI units when discussing the various slight ups and downs in our climate: warmth is spoken of in Farenheit (“ooh, it’s in the low 70s!”), chills in Celsius (“-1, I’ll never get to work”) and depths of precipitation in the metric system when if anyone tried to apply this to fruit and veg there’d be a revolution in local newspapers the length and breadth of the country (in miles, naturally).

But for all out crap flatlining weather (or maybe because of it), snow remains magical.  Maybe it’s because it so rarely hits here in any decent amount, maybe because it makes everything look lovely until it goes all brown and slushy, maybe it’s the way that it cushions sound so that when you wake up in the morning you just know it’s snowed by the difference in the silence.  Or maybe because I remember almost all my childhood birthdays being spent playing in the stuff.  It’s ace, it’s fluffy and I have a bottle of vodka in the garden right now getting naturally cooled and lightly dusted in this year’s apparent chaos (ie, it’s snowing a little bit).  And at last, I have the ideal atmosphere in which to talk about this record.

Of course, I would have liked to have mentioned this record before now, but after two cold, snowy Christmases, Kate Bush released this one during one of the mildest winters for several years, and it just rained a bit and took some of the fun away from it.  And while it’s not exactly snowing like billy-ho outside, it’s close enough and certainly enough to add to a remarkable collection of songs.

50 Words For Snow is seven long songs about the enchantment brought about by snow, and succeeds immediately with opener Snowflake, Kate putting herself in the position of the titular protagonist backed by a piano and drum that sound as if they’ve had their sound dampened by millions of her snowflake’s companions already and a tidal riff that reminds me of XTC at their most thoughtful.  It’s a sad tale of trying to find love against almost impossible odds, but the repeated line “Keep falling, I’ll find you” gives it a gravity and heart that crystals of water vapour have no right to do so, but do because snow makes children and romantics of us all.

This childlike romanticism flows right through the album, with tracks such as Misty about building a snowman with an initial childhood lifegiving fantasy, that seems to morph swiftly into something altogether more grown-up and sensual, with references to “creamy skin” abounding, before seemingly finding him all melted in bed next to her the next morning – but it’s alright, as it’s still snowing, the implication being that a whole new saucy encounter can be knocked together in a matter of minutes.  Raymond Briggs this isn’t, but then again there’s few people who can do saucy with quite the same intensity and fervour as Kate Bush, so no complaints from me.

Despite the requirement of at least a working knowledge of Himalayan geography during Wild Man, the romanticism continues with a tale of an expeditionary group (somehow featuring Andy Fairweather-Lowe from Amen Corner) tasked with finding the Yeti, only to cover his tracks when they find him to save him from being hunted.  A more straightforward tale appears in Snowed In At Wheeler Street, a duet with Elton John that feels like Thomas Dolby at his most minimal, followed by the fun title track, featuring Stephen Fry as a professor throwing out as many words for (real or invented, mostly the latter) snow as he can, while Ms Bush cheerfully goads him from the sidelines about how many he still needs to do (“come on man, you’ve got 44 to go”).

Musically, it’s a continuation of Kate’s desire to continue to experiment – with the exception of the aforementioned Dolbyesque …Wheeler Street, the musical pulse and chord progressions come across like Radiohead at their most stately and elegiac, all with the instrumentation sounding curiously dampened by the much-aforementioned snow, with the exception of the closing Among Angels that is bright and crisp by comparison.  It’s certainly one to be listened to under certain conditions, albeit ones that are barometrically-influenced rather than psychoactively as is usually the case when music is described thusly.  And as I finish this, it’s since stopped snowing, it’s rained a bit and the vodka I put out in the garden earlier has frozen to the patio.  So, as I contemplate either going out with some hot, soapy water or a straw, I’d have to say that this is the perfect record for this weather, however fleeting it might be this year.

Hopefully, I got someone’s attention with that – in which case, hello you and I hope you’re having a lovely evening.  And I wasn’t lying either, as a quick jaunt over to The Local Strangers’ website (Clicky O’Here) and a few seconds later, after providing your email, vague geographical details and where you leave your spare front door key when you go out of an evening (last bit may not be true, but it never hurts to ask), you will receive not only this lovely new brace of quality tracks from Seattle’s favourite adopted offspring, but also their debut EP which turned out to be my favourite non-album record of last year.

Normally I put all the linky stuff at the end of my posts (which suggests that I have some sort of structure.  Don’t let this fool you), but I read today that Joseph Arthur has lost his distribution and radio teams since/because he gave his last album out over the internet for free and this has annoyed me a bit, as it strikes me as a bit stroppy of them.  Anyway, there you go.  And so, on with the matter of this new record.

Devils and Ghosts is very much a game of two halves, as any good pairing should be.  Opener Devil And A Stiff Drink sees the twosome fire up with a full band behind them, allowing vocalist Aubrey Zoli to throw herself cheerfully into the centre of it all, her voice switching from sultry to powerful belting-out with a joy that is obvious and an accuracy of both melody and strength which is constantly unerring and remarkable.  This will become the theme tune of many a Drinky Thursday to come, of that I am certain.

The flipside to this is Give Up The Ghost (a-ha!  I see what they’ve done here), with Aubrey again taking centre stage but this time in melancholic resignation mode, swapping sass for sadness.  Matt Hart’s delicate acoustic intro soon gives way to further band-based embellishments, but the layers here are much more restrained and moving than on the previous track, allowing the vocals to once again sail through the midst of the song imperiously, reminiscent to these ears of Rickie Lee Jones at her most emotionally-wounded.

With the main focus of both tracks being this amazing voice, Devils And Ghosts comes across as a much more feminine release than their previous EP, and this – along with a greater emphasis on a more collective performance – makes for an interesting expansion on their sound rather than a step away from (the quality of songwriting makes these songs sound good whether it’s with a full band or just Aubrey & Matt performing them), paving a tantalising path towards what we should hope for their first full-length album.  And just as with their first record, I urge everyone reading this to give them a go.

• The Beatles played their last Hamburg shows as willing R’n'R apprentices in December 1962; in December 1970 Paul McCartney files a suit to dissolve the band’s contractual obligations and begins the official end of one of the most successful and culture-altering bands ever.

• In 1968, the New Yardbirds play their first shows under their new name Led Zeppelin; in 1976… erm, not much happened as Robert Plant had injured himself the previous year. Well, there was The Song Remains the Same, but other than Peter Grant going off his head in a high-pitched voice, it was a bit iffy. Still, the 7 years previous featured six of the best rock albums ever released. And Presence.

• Blimey, even if you’d dropped a mirror your luck would have changed back last Christmas.

Of course this “fallow period” wasn’t so much a gap in proceedings as a creative workaholic’s paradise – three full albums recording and touring alongside Isobel Campbell, two wonderfully cinematic, eccentric and redemptive albums as frontman with the Soulsavers and a long-awaited collaboration with Greg Dulli as one half of the Gutter Twins count as some of the finest records released in this period. Throw in a huge amount of pitchings-in with an eclectic array of artists both familiar to many (Twilight Singers, Queens of the Stone Age, The Breeders, UNKLE, Bomb The Bass) and not-quite-so (My Jerusalem, Manna, The Separate amongst others) plus an acoustic solo tour or two to blow the cobwebs of the old stuff again, and you have a huge spectrum of influences and new pathways to walk and skills to pick up to be absorbed and bent around Mark Lanegan’s unique musical will. The gap also represents an apparent reassertion of personal control: for all Bubblegum’s strength of songwriting and performance, it was all a bit “Heroin: The Musical” and somewhat disjointed (albeit wonderfully) for its collection of musings on the darker corners of a man’s soul.

The sudden intro to Gravedigger’s Song kicks in, almost as if Out Of Nowhere had finished five minutes ago instead of the thick end of a decade. Yet despite the urgency of the beat that drives the song forward, the first impression of Blues Funeral is one of utter control. He may still have his demons somewhere within, but he now knows exactly what they are and – more importantly – lets them know that he knows exactly where they live. This control is married to a confidence throughout the album that takes the listener into places that may seem superficially similar to those he’s taken us before, but this time it’s as guide and curator rather than exhibit. This allows for a tighter grip on his ideas and a looser rein on the way he projects himself: Gray Goes Black is a particular early highlight of this, the guitars reminiscent of Chris Isaak as part of an imagined Angelo Badalamenti score wind seductively around a soft yet pin-sharp vocal that takes its ending cues from recent b-side (and Japanese bonus track) Burning Jacob’s Ladder.

Of course it’s impossible to talk about anything Mark Lanegan is involved in without mentioning his voice. It certainly has to be said that giving up the ciggies has worked miracles on his vocal chords – the rumble’s still there but the edges are softer and the range doesn’t feel like quite so much work at the lower and higher ends as it did on Bubblegum. This also means that he can channel this apparent ease of delivery into imposing himself on his songs more than ever.

I mentioned Sergio Leone in my review of the Gravedigger’s Song 7″, and with good reason. Leone had a trick up his sleeve with regard to sound design in his films (much-copied since), which was to overemphasise the sound of gunshot – pistols were overdubbed with shotguns, shotguns overdubbed with rifles, and cannons like (to quote film historian Sir Christopher Frayling, although he may have been exaggerating) nuclear blasts. Also, every ricochet made a noise; even those that bounced off the sand. This approach hasn’t been lost on a certain Leone fan and subject of this review who once appeared on his own messageboard and paraphrased a line from The Outlaw Josey Wales that has since passed into legend: and it’s testament to producer and co-conspirator Alain Johannes that the music that backs each song follows this simple yet effective rule where everything is that little bit punchier and forthright than normal, but having everything doing this all at once makes the end result feel absolutely natural and can only leave anyone listening salivating at the thought of what’s going to happen to this set on stage. The Leone connection is stretched that little bit further to allow room for St Louis Elegy, a quiet epic that takes in the huge panoramas and inches-away closeups that Ennio Morricone soundtracked so well and brings it all bang up to date.

Much has been made of a more electronic direction with Blues Funeral, and this is certainly the case with a couple of songs. Ode To Sad Disco will come as a huge surprise to fans both old and recent, its driving electronica coming from a few decades ago when synthesizers resembled antique telephone exchanges and the zeitgeist was of pushing the boundaries of independent music. If ever there was proof required of someone taking himself right out of his comfort zone and presenting a whole new facet of his work and influences, this is the most startling evidence of it that I have ever heard. And he’s so comfortable with it – the drum patterns and long, floating synth chords are so evocative of when New Order found their feet, with Mark’s gentle melody patterns over the top of that reminiscent of a mid-swagger Ian McCulloch, with Tiny Grain Of Truth sublimely closing the album in a laid-back manner of Mac’s own electronic Electrafixion project. The electronics remain switched on in a more restrained but no less essential manner on the following track. There’s no two ways about it, Phantasmagoria Blues is a staggering breakup song and such a disarmingly emotional song that it’s physically draining to experience; the deceptive gentleness of delivery pulls you in to pay more attention, and it’s very difficult to pull oneself away from.

These two successful experiments are neatly bookended by a brace of tracks that exemplify why the “Band” suffix was added to Mark Lanegan’s name. Both Riot In My House and Quiver Syndrome rock out with a swagger of such ease that his friends and co-workers from other bands must both enjoy performing and also wish that they could do this so readily. The latter is especially well-placed, having the most fun song appear after the saddest is a good move and exemplifies the skill of emotionally ordering the running of an album, an artform becoming sadly lost in an increasingly shuffling industry.

Lyrically, the old imagery is still there in force for the most part. Tales of hardship and loss married to visions of a grand apocalypse still figure strongly from a man adept at telling his story but burying the more personal details under a flurry of beautifully structured Blood and Thunder pulpitry; because much as he loves to sing, and as much as he writes about what he knows, the general rule of thumb is that very little of what he knows has anything to do with the rest of us. But there are moments where these walls, meticulously created over many years, are thinner in places than before. Harborview Hospital especially switches often between allegory and stark reality to discomforting effect, the mood lightened by more synthesized backing and the vaguest background hints of old Peter Hook basslines providing a celestial rather than infernal outlook.

This really is one of those albums that comes around so rarely as to be almost completely unique. Mark Lanegan has skirted around fame in the shadows of his friends and colleagues (and, it has to be said, also his own), Blues Funeral should be the record that not only puts him up in the pantheon occupied by his peers, but way above that. Certainly the most focused album of his long career, it’s a completely logical step from his previous work (indeed, echoes of both Hit The City b-sides can be heard here in the nods to Mud Pink Skag in Quiver Syndrome‘s robotic beat and Deep Black Vanishing Train‘s beautiful mellotron expansion of Mirrored) and a huge leap in front of anything else that has been released in a very long time. It’s telling that the experiments in sound all feel absolutely at home as part of Lanegan’s canon, there is nothing here that could alienate any of his existing fanbase, only draw them in closer as new listeners are drawn in from all corners depending on which song here grabs them first. Blues Funeral is, despite the title, a joyous album that deserves to be heard by everyone. Utterly, unequivocally essential. Anyone who reads the above stream-of-consciousness drivel that I’ve just parked on the screen while I listen to the album from start to finish for the first time only needs to read that one preceding sentence.

The album’s title sort of gives it away, really.  24 songs from a bygone era eulogising that most social and potentially poisonous form of summer pastimes, cooking meat products in the Great Outdoors.  Or, at least using the imagery of freshly-prepared meat for the purposes of alluding to something altogether more saucy.  It might just be me, but it’s difficult to believe everyone here’s being 100% innocent with titles such as Who Did You Give My Barbecue To?, Pepper Sauce Mama (with it’s opening line “Pepper Sauce Mama, you make my meat red hot”) and I Crave My Pig Meat.

Given the age of the recordings and the fact that there surely couldn’t have been a vast number of recordings of this subject matter that someone could simply pick out the best two dozen, the quality throughout is remarkable and a credit to the curators at Old Hat Records for sourcing and taking such care of these songs.  Credit is also due to these guys for the 20-page booklet that accompanies this CD that manages to cram so much info on both the history of the American Barbecue and of each song/artist that it’s easy to fully steep (or should that be marinade?  Yeah, probably not) oneself into the unique atmosphere that this record creates, even if my attention is drawn to the potted history of The Two Charlies – which goes to some length to explain that Charlie Jordan may not necessarily be the Charlie Jordan that blues aficionados might first think, but doesn’t then go on to say whether or not the second Charlie (Manson) is the one that we all first thought it was.

Those seeking Blues authenticity will be more than happy at the list of names on offer, the various nicknames evoking all manner of the right imagery: Frankie “Half Pint” Jackson (who was somewhat diminutive), Tiny Parham (who was named rather ironically), Blind Boy Fuller (who was) and Bogus Ben Covington (who used to pretend to be blind, but wasn’t) are all part of a rich pantheon of Blues/Jazz nomenclature from south of the Mason-Dixon line that we’re all familiar with.  I must confess to not being quite so au fait with Richard M. Jones’ Jazz Wizards or Vance Dixon And His Pencils, but I’ll try most anything once and the leisurely-grooved jazz of the former’s Smoked Meat Blues and the slightly more sprightly Crispin Hellion Glover-esque weird scat of the latter are both joys to listen to.  Even the apparent paradox created by Tempo King And His Kings of Tempo (surely this’d mean that they’re all him?  My brain hurts) fits in well with this rather wonderfully strange compilation.

So yeah, I happily admit to buying this album for no reason other than baffled intrigue.  Blues From The Pit certainly intrigues and baffles in equal measure, and it also succeeds admirably in entertaining by virtues of being fun (and occasionally very funny) to listen to, by providing a snapshot of an era where musicians of the time were even then bragging about material wealth and sex, and just providing a smile at the sheer brass neck of one song being little more than an advert for the drummer’s restaurant.  The music’s really good, the atmosphere is delightful, and I’m now very hungry.  Result all round, then.