MARK LANEGAN - The Winding Sheet (1990)

The "Mark Lanegan Band," such that it is, at this point includes:

Mike Johnson (guitar), Jack Endino (bass), Mark Pickerel (drums), Steve Fisk (keys)

With guest appearances from:  

Kurt Cobain; Krist Novoselic; Justin Williams

Although we're multiple records into this writing project now, The Winding Sheet is really the first chance to hear Lanegan's voice as an artist, in the way I wanted to blog about.  These are his songs, his lyrics, his vocal melodies.  So, what does it sound like?

Track One:  "Mockingbirds"

This one embodies everything that could be great about this project.  Whether it's Lanegan or Mike Johnson who came up with it, that is one haunting chord that backs the main verse and an equally haunting counterpoint for the piano bridge.  That in turn lets Lanegan go deep and resonant to carry the track.  Two and a half minutes, and done.  So, we're definitely starting strong.  Most gorgeous melody on the record.

Lyrically, we get introduced to Lanegan's style of poetry wherein the phrases brush against the edges of either being resentful, mournful, or guilty, without making it quite clear what the meaning is.  (Here, is the mockingbird an internal or external voice?)  We also see the way he usually doesn't write a chorus, but does like to use the last verse to mirror or recontextualize an image from the first - we start with a mockingbird and end with two together.

Track Two:  "Museum"

And this one embodies the limitations of the project.  Now Lanegan's voice admittedly still sounds great, and there's the trick at the end of the verse where after straining he drops into a base chord along with the guitar, and that usually sounds good.  But for me, a good sounding chord over a sparse guitar part doesn't equal a great song.  This is exactly what I've struggled with in the past when trying to get into Lanegan's music before trying this blogging project.  Basically when I've tried in the past, all of his songs kinda sounded like this.  Good singer moaning vague lyrics without much of a tune or a point.

If I can speculate a little bit from a place of total ignorance here, I think this is where the gap comes between this sort of "blues album" and the ones that he cites as his inspiration.  We're emulating the deep, resonant singing over a sparse acoustic guitar line that you get from the old records that he and Kurt would spin, sure.  What we're not emulating, though, is that those guys came up in those musical scenes and were proverbially born with guitars in their hands.  Although I'm far from an expert on acoustic blues, the way I see it, the Robert Johnsons of the world could use a standard set of chords and a standard song structure as their alphabet to pour out their tunes of misery to the listener.  Lanegan, by contrast, doesn't have an innate sense of how a guitar song should work.  The only reason Sheet is built around the acoustic guitar is that it happens to be what the artists who inspired him used.  So sometimes he stumbles onto a great hook to anchor things, but many of the songs end up sounding like unfinished musical ideas as a result.  I can barely remember how tracks like "Museum" go even when I'm listening to them.

Track Three:  "Undertow"

First overtly death-obsessed song, with many more to come.  Interesting choice from such a young artist, but young man are always trying to sound like old souls, so not a huge surprise.  I like the faster paced, insistent melody line here, especially as the lyrics start getting more insistent that "water will forgive me."  There's a reason that quietly drowning is a popular image in '90s rock - it keeps giving.  I hate to be that guy repeating over and over, but the right chorus would do a lot to push "Undertow" to new levels.

Track Four: "Ugly Sunday"

A slower one, but still built around yet another propulsive acoustic guitar riff much like the ones from the last few tracks.  Here we stay in the same low register for the vocal line, even keeping the extraneous "yeah" subdued, in a moment of what seems to be quiet mourning for an inevitable goodbye.  Not the most dynamic song, but at least here it fits the idea of gray rain with no end in sight.

Track Five:  "Down In The Dark"

Okay, so occasionally the record brings in something other than a strummed acoustic.  Here's a welcome taste of rock guitar (supplied by Kurt Cobain*) and matching distortion over Lanegan's vocals, neither feeling out place because they match the tone of the rest of the record.  This is the first song that explicitly includes sex (well, still too couched to be "explicit"), and surprise, Lanegan talks about it with the same dark fatalism and self-absorption that he talks about, say, booze or death.  If we're going to go with repetitious moody pieces all record, I'd almost rather they be in the style of "Down In The Dark;" I think it'd allow for a little more variety without compromising Sheet's character as a "quiet"/"personal" record.

Track Six:  "Wildflowers"**

I don't quite understand where he's going with the questions about whether first "I" and then "we" have "done good things and never cared why," but since I'm interested enough to try to sort it out, I'll call it among the stronger lyrics on Sheet.  It helps that it's paired with a wordless chorus that has Lanegan singing out of his natural range but clearly being controlled while giving the illusion of straining; that's one of my favorite vocal tricks.

Track Seven:  "Eyes Of A Child"

Here's another example of what I'm talking about when I accuse some songs of becoming a nondescript blur.  The chords do sound like blues chords, but the song isn't really a blues song, and it doesn't really have another gear to go to.  You're left with something that sounds pretty good in the moment, and leaves little impression.

Track Eight:  "The Winding Sheet"

I like this one.  The slow build collapsing into the tortured "the darkness dares my eyes to close," followed by the key change*** , followed by the humming... sounds really good to my ears.  See, coming into this after the fact, my expectation when I listen to a Mark Lanegan solo album is that I want songs meant to be listened to in a dark room while hovering at the edge of tears and consciousness, leaving the listener not knowing whether or not it'd maybe feel better to just give in and close their eyes.  Here's one of the first examples of why that's my sense of his work.  Of the songs that attempt that vibe, the title track does the best job of landing it.  

Track Nine:  "Woe"

Aaand, still more of Lanegan just mumbling in his admittedly distinct voice, without much hook or tune.  I'm realizing that not only does his style of songwriting not always resonate with me, but the oblique lyrics also only resonate with me about half the time.  When you have a song when there's nothing to do but focus on the words, and they're stuff like:

I'd rather be drunk than dead

Or go where Jesus fled

So I'll get drunk again

Or maybe not

Well, as a listener, there's just not much for me there.

Track Ten:  "Ten Feet Tall"

The main riff, granted, is only two notes, but it's propulsive.  Enough to sustain a song?  How about if Lanegan is also experimenting with seeing how long he can hold a note?  And how about if it includes an actual legit guitar solo?  Fine, I'll take it.  Nice enough to listen to it.

Track Eleven:  "Where Did You Sleep Last Night"

Nirvana's acoustic take on the track from Unplugged In New York is so ingrained in my mind it's hard to imagine another version, so obviously I'm at a disadvantage coming in backward, so to speak.  Despite later, in a part of Sing Backwards to which I haven't written about yet, the author describing a conversation in which Kurt promises to sing the song just like Lanegan would, I don't know that that's actually what happened.  Kurt did it so vulnerably, whereas the main thing that comes through here is menace.  The guitar (with Kurt and Krist playing, I believe) is electric and growling, the drums are pounding, and the Mark L.'s voice is dripping with coiled aggression, like he could easily be about to leave his "girl" in the same state as the husband from the second verse if he gets an answer he doesn't like.  Lanegan saying "shiver for me, now" definitely sounds like a threat.

While it's way beyond the scope of this blog to dive into the storied history of "In The Pines"/"Where Did You Sleep Last Night" from its 19th century origins through the work of Lead Belly to make it part of the canon through the parallel evolutionary paths that somehow involved both Dolly Parton and Nirvana... I do think the dark, menacing take that Lanegan goes with is both cool in and of itself, and a valid interpretation that's picking up on an underappreciated element that's definitely present in older versions too.  My main criticisms are one, that Lanegan's version loses the clear sense of conversation between two characters that you get in Lead Belly's version.  And two, that his big innovation - yelling the last verse - should be more intense, more unhinged.  That latter problem is mostly in the mixing; in Sing Backwards he describes trying to match Kurt's rock energy and pushing his voice to the limits of its range, and you can hear it when you focus just on the vocal, but the production pushes it to the background, so the contrast with the rest of the song isn't all that it could be.

Track Twelve:  "Juarez"

In his book, he does go into the thought process that led him to include this little flight of whimsy or whatever, that goes so far as to fade out during what seems to be the start of a verse.  So, he had this little organ-like sound and just threw out some non sequiturs about blowjobs and crack and diapers.  Maybe it was fun to make?  Because it's not fun to listen to.  And I'm all for throwing in some humor, but, uh, what exactly is the joke?  What am I even supposed to find amusing here?  At least it's really short.

Track Thirteen:  "I Love You Little Girl" 

Another one-chord quick one idea to close with something "normal," making "Juarez" make even less sense.  I don't believe for a second that Lanegan at this stage in his life is capable of loving someone else better than he loves himself.  Shall we just say that the self-serving context of this "love" was deliberate?

Overall:

A lot of my distance from Lanegan's work still remains, and I think I summed it up as best as I could in the comments about "Museum."  What can I say, at least at this stage in his career, he insists on not being quite the type of artist I think he could be.

As a complete piece, The Winding Sheet has some nothing songs, but none of that takes away from the fact that it makes quite a statement as, effectively, a debut.  Hello, Seattle music scene, meet this incredibly rich baritone singer who pairs that thick Washington accent with an ability to shift between a drunken desperate rasp and a rocker's scream at the drop of a hat.  And whose songs exude darkness all the way down.  Yeah, he's a little wet behind the ears, could maybe stand to take some direction on how to incorporate more melody, and yeah, he's a little pretentious and self-important, but this is a unique voice.  Pay attention to this guy!  He's carving out a niche here: sonically quiet, emotionally heavy.  His music doesn't sound like anything else, and he's hopefully only going to get better if he lives long enough to do so!  Irrespective of whether I end up concluding that Sheet is one of his better or lesser records, it's going to get some automatic credit for coming first.

Not a huge difference either way, but the narrative as depicted in Sing Backwards And Weep is that he actually made this record relatively clean, not yet at the stage of getting blackout drunk or frequenting substances any harder than weed.  On the other hand, the liner notes from I Am The Wolf describe the ideas on this record as being "born of sadness and uncertainty with my circumstances at the time: relationships, money problems, alcohol, depression, addiction, and so on."  Regardless of the exact timeline, I don't think it's too much of a surprise to note that the darkness and the obsession with death in Lanegan's music (and in his soul, I suppose) seem to long predate his love affair with heroin.  The "complicated" artists I write about tend to be the same people, irrespective of which habits they've most recently pick up or put down.

Favorite track:  "Mockingbirds"

Runner up:  "The Winding Sheet"

Least favorite track:  "Juarez"

Rating:  3.5/5

On to more of Sing Backwards And Weep, whenever I get around to it!

Complete list of Lanegan records about which I have written so far, in order of what is objectively their quality

1)  The Winding Sheet

*Who multiple sources list as also singing on the track.  I could not for the life of me hear his voice for multiple listens.  Finally realized that he's in the background during the bridge, playing the same role that any rando or a doubled vocal track could have.

**I'm going with the spelling from I Am The Wolf, but most sources seem to render it as "Wild Flowers."

 

***I want to call it the dominant chord, although that could be wrong; as is obvious, I do not have anything like perfect pitch.