Album Review - Somebody's Knocking - Mark Lanegan Band

Disclaimers:

I am a fan of Mark Lanegan and his work.

I like nearly everything he’s done or worked on.

I was a Screaming Trees fan in 1991.  I rooted for their success and secretly savored their failure to make the mainstream, taking that as an indication of my own astute insight into musical superiority; proud to be part of a cult following.

Singles hit theaters the year I graduated high school.

My interests wandered.

I uncovered the SST Years Anthology in a used CD store the year before I left college. Their music surged back into my life.

I kept my girlfriend’s copy of Sweet Oblivion when she broke up with me.

Lanegan’s presence was cemented into my “adult” years, although until 2008, he would remain to me “the dude from Screaming Trees.”

With the full promise of internet produced connectivity coming to fruition, I learned the man’s name and uncovered his prolific solo career.

I started with Whiskey for the Holy Ghost based on Amazon reviews.

I stepped back to The Winding Sheet, sat stunned with the realization that he was partly, perhaps largely, responsible for Kurt Cobain’s iconic Unplugged performance of Where Did You Sleep Last Night.

I began to search out all that I could from him, progressing through his body of albums and collaborations in chromatic order.

I downloaded albums sight-unseen and listened with moderate concern and disappointment, each time thinking, “this isn’t like the last one, that one I just grew to love.”

Scraps at Midnight is softer than the rest.

I’ll Take Care of You is an album of cover songs.

Field Songs is transient and minimalist.

Here Comes That Weird Chill is a rusty wrench on a drainpipe, a banging sonnet.

Bubblegum swings and stretches.

But I found a finger hold in each album; a song that allowed me entry into the complete work.

I could make a case today why each of these albums is his best work and my personal favorite.

So I naturally listened to his new record, Somebody’s Knocking, with great anticipation. And greater caution. Pre-release prognostications all hung on music clips and interviews that suggested the album was headed in a direction different from what long time fans might expect. They were right and wrong, as far as I have learned that to “expect” something from Mark Lanegan is to court disappointment.  Right and wrong also because the songs and music do feel different from anything he’s done recently, but everything is also anchored strongly in familiar territory with his deeply resonant, gravelly voice.

Many songs spark comparisons to Joy Division, New Order, The Cure, and other late 80s electronic post-punk outfits.  I’m not a musical historian or scholar.  But I would suggest this comparison finds it fullest fruition in my surprising personal favorite, Gazing From the Shore, which could easily have been plucked straight from a Psychedelic Furs record circa 1989.  Or Name and Number, which sounds almost as if it could have quietly slipped out of an early Trees catalogue.

Night Flight to Kabul, Letter Never Sent, Penthouse High, and Radio Silence all pull strongly from that same era.

But other works are far more familiar and have ties to his expanded catalogue of work.

Playing Nero echoes The Lonely Night with Moby.

Dark Disco Jag has shades of earlier works with Bomb The Bass and Magnus. Mark climbs into his Greg Dulli suit to sing “Sway now sister sway, in the corner all alone.”

Paper Hat could easily fit on any of his last three records, as could the melancholy closer Two Bells Ringing at Once.

As with anything new, I was a little put out at being forced to actually listen to something. Like anyone, I enjoy a healthy appetite for instant gratification. I listen to what I want, when I want. We all want more of what we know and love, but also something new.  MAYA.

But having prepared myself to not like something, I’m growing to love the album more as I listen to it and settle into the familiar strangeness of it.

I can’t be impartial in my assessment of this album.

I am a fan of Mark Lanegan and his work.

I like nearly everything he’s done or worked on.

But I’m concerned less with convincing anyone that this album is for them than applauding the effort. In other words, I don’t really care if you like this album or not, that is a matter of personal taste and preference.  But I think we should all be thankful that artists like Mark Lanegan persist in producing things that make us rethink the past and alter our visions of the present.