Less than a year after Mark Lanegan released his 2019 LP Something’s Knocking, the singer-songwriter returns with a new album he was inspired to record while writing his upcoming memoir.
Straight Songs of Sorrow arrives May 8th, just over a week after Lanegan’s memoir Sing Backwards and Weep hits shelves on April 28th. On Wednesday, Lanegan shared the companion album’s first song “Skeleton Key,” a seven-minute track that recalls Lanegan’s bluesy Nineties solo output.
“Writing the book, I didn’t get catharsis,” Lanegan said of the memoir and new album in a statement. “All I got was a Pandora’s box full of pain and misery. I went way in and remembered shit I’d put away 20 years ago. But I started writing these songs the minute I was done, and I realized there was a depth of emotion because they were all linked to memories from this book. It was a relief to suddenly go back to music. Then I realized that was the gift of the book: these songs. I’m really proud of this record.”
Lanegan’s collaborators on Straight Songs of Sorrow include Gutter Twins bandmate Greg Dulli, Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Lamb of God’s Mark Morton, the Bad Seeds’ Warren Ellis, Portishead’s Adrian Utley, Ed Harcourt, Peter Hook’s son Jack Bates and Lanegan’s wife Shelley Brien, who co-wrote the album’s “Burying Ground” and “Eden Lost And Found” and sings duet alongside her husband on “This Game of Love.”
Both Straight Songs of Sorrow and Sing Backwards and Weep are available to preorder now at Lanegan’s webstore.
Straight Songs of Sorrow Tracklist
1. “I Wouldn’t Want to Say”
2. “Apples From a Tree”
3. “This Game of Love”
4. “Ketamine”
5. “Bleed All Over”
6. “Churchbells, Ghosts”
7. “Internal Hourglass Discussion”
8. “Stockholm City Blues”
9. “Skeleton Key”
10. “Daylight in the Nocturnal House”
11. “Ballad of a Dying Rover”
12. “Hanging On (For DRC)”
13. “At Zero Below”
14. “At Eden Lost and Found”
