Blues Funeral

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With producer Alain Johannes providing bass, keyboards, and percussion, <i>Blues Funeral</i> is the most sonically enhanced album of Mark Lanegan's career. Taking the textured walls of 2004's <i>Bubblegum</i> and reinforcing them with greater variety and tonal density, Lanegan and Johannes build a cathedral of sound that's mighty impressive. "Ode to Sad Disco" is a long track inspired by the music in Nicolas Winding Refn's <i>Pusher</i> film trilogy. "Bleeding Muddy Water" and "Deep Black Vanishing Train" explore the soul of the blues without replicating its form. "Quiver Syndrome" drones with a hard rock power and a sense of scorched-earth desperation. "Harborview Hospital" breaks like the sun over the horizon. Twilight Singers' Greg Dulli joins in for the noirscape of "St. Louis Elegy," which ticks like a time bomb and rides an evil wind that blows no good. Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme adds grisly guitar to the appropriately titled "Riot in My House." "Leviathan" crafts a beautifully skewered weirdness. "Tiny Grain of Truth" caps things off with a seven-minute anthem that sounds like the wrap-up for a movie about the end of the world.

via Apple Music