The age of the rock ‘n’ roll shaman is nearly gone. As far as frontman archetypes go, David Bowie’s cool and detached postmodernism won and Jim Morrison’s fiery and passionate romanticism lost. The idea of rock as something sacred and visionary has gradually gone out of fashion. This makes a singer like Mark Lanegan, who just released his 10th full-length, Gargoyle, a dead man walking. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.Ever since the longtime cult artist was a young underground rocker—one clearly inspired by Morrison and haunted punk-bluesman Jeffrey Lee Pierce, whose performances were regularly described as séances and possessions—Lanegan and his dark, cavernous, graveyard groan have been evoking spirit images of archaic apparitions and the underworld. In particular, the singer’s rendition of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” (which predates Nirvana’s) sounds like a transmission from hell. Meanwhile, his lyrics come littered with Jungian imagery and references to religion and altered states of consciousness: In the 2004 single “Hit The City,” a sublimely ominous rocker featuring PJ Harvey on backing vocals, he sings about darkness, the promised land, ghosts, and kingdom come—that’s some grade A esoterica.Shamans are loners, people who participate in village life yet largely live outside of it, and that’s Lanegan to a tee. While he spent a good deal of his early years with Screaming Trees—a Pacific Northwest band who were always more in tune with the otherworldliness of ’80s psychedelia than sweaty dude-grunge—he started his solo career way back in 1990 with The Winding Sheet. Since then, the 6’ 2” brooder has cut a labyrinthine path: In addition to a slew of solo gems blending mountain folk balladry, gothic-tinged blues rock, dream pop, and even electronic, he’s racked up short-lived collaborations with stoner rock gods Queens of the Stone Age, Scottish chanteuse Isobel Campbell, fellow alt-rock icon Greg Dulli, avant-garde guitarist Duke Garwood, and electronic producer Moby. Lanegan loves working with other musicians, he just never sticks around for very long. Perhaps that’s because the vocalist, like any shaman, ultimately feels more at home in the spirit world than our own.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.
