Blues Funeral is the latest album to hit the airwaves from the Mark Lanegan Band. His seventh release, and first release of new material in eight years, it would make you think he couldn’t go wrong. But alas, you’d be wrong. Unlike its title suggests, it lacks any semblance of what is generally considered blues, unless the actual death of blues is what he was going for (hence the funeral).
Lanegan’s deep, sultry, smoky vocals are the only thing that holds the album together, along with the one standout track, “The Gravedigger’s Song,” which opens the album with a gritty, heavy bass line, eerie guitars, and spooky synthesizers—a walk of the damned, if you will. After this, the album falls apart like a decomposing corpse. “Riot In My House” and “Quiver Syndrome” are two good basic rock songs, but lack any standout riffs or the edginess we’ve witnessed from the band on albums past. “St. Louis Elegy” features some nice Latin-esque country guitar riffs in the chorus, which would prove handy for a Mexican standoff, and “Deep Black Vanishing Train” is a quieter, moodier piece, with some nice deep vocals and haunting cellos to match. But though the aforementioned are bearable, it seems most on the album are not.
“Gray Goes Black” does nothing of the sort and stays a banal and bland shade of gray. “Ode To Sad Disco” is exactly that—sad, contains elements of disco, and goes for 6.24 minutes too long. And “Tiny Grain of Truth” completely misleads, with any true musical talent being lost in over seven minutes of hippie, trippy, esoteric synthesizer improvisation that makes you wonder if the machine simply got stuck on a loop.
The primary track is exciting and outstanding, which makes the rest all the more disappointing. An avid fan of his past work, it pains me to say it, but I wouldn’t even play this at a funeral.
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