Ugly Sunday (R.I.P. Mark Lanegan, 1964-2022)

 

I saw the Screaming Trees in 1988. They were an SST band at the time and they opened for fIREHOSE at a club called Revival in Philly. They were all hair, distortion, volume, and wahwah — like watching multiple copies of Cousin Itt let loose in a Guitar Center. I liked them, but it seemed, to my ears, that they were in an enclosed chamber of same-i-ness songwriting-wise. When I listened to some of the early albums, that opinion didn’t change. Good, but come on boys, a little variation please?

But in 1990 I read a review of Trees singer Mark Lanegan’s first solo album, The Winding Sheet, and it talked of a big step forward in songwriting. I remembered him as that menacing brooding dude who treated the microphone like it was his only point of focus, but he had a cool voice, and, wow, was this review glowing. I bought the album.

 

It was a real revelation. The Trees’ scorching fuzz party was missing and in its place were acoustic songs that were closer to Tom Waits without the clunky percussion (Lanegan added that on later, brilliant albums, like Bubblegum, to great effect), and the whole thing harkened back to something older and more blues-drenched. What remained from the Trees was the growl. In fact, the growl was enhanced. He was operating in a vocal range so low that I could at least try and sing along. 

 

I played the bejeezus out of that album, and possibly played this particular song more than other.

The Winding Sheet wasn’t just the start of a great solo career; it triggered a near-complete transformation in what the Trees sounded like. Their subsequent albums backed off a bit from the wall-of-fuzz approach and they let the songs breathe. Uncle Anesthesia, the next Trees record, was light years ahead of its predecessors, and the one after that — Sweet Oblivion — is truly one of the greatest hard-rock albums ever made. Sweet Oblivion is as if The Winding Sheet had a baby with Black Sabbath’s Volume 4. It roars, but when it doesn’t, it growls and seethes. (Replacing undoubtedly skilled drummer Mark Pickerel with the even-better Barrett Martin, who sounds like Bonham at the bottom of the castle staircase, had no small effect on that record as well).

 

There are so many versions of Lanegan, but The Winding Sheet really was, more than any other, utterly transformational to vaulting him (and his bandmates) into another realm. My god, he'll be missed. Turn it up.