Mark Lanegan

With a lineup featuring Alice in Chains vocalist Layne Staley, Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready and Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin, the supergroup Mad ...

After departing the Queens of the Stone Age fold in a full-time capacity, Lanegan dived headfirst into two album collaborations with the dark electro troupe Soulsavers. They weren’t the only electronic act to request his services, however: enter producer James Lavelle, who recruited him to contribute lead vocals to Another Night Out, a standout track on Unkle’s 2010 full-length Where Did the Night Fall. The cinematic song feels like the denouement of a movie, between its dynamic, string-driven swells and pervasive sense of feeling emotionally bereft. One of the best moments here is the single Idle Hands, a haunted song about what happens when you finally give into darkness and drag someone else along with you in the process. That’s a testament to his acumen for working with other musicians – he intuitively understood what a song needed to succeed and when deferring to others made sense. Of course, even on songs where Lanegan sounded fragile, his delivery had quiet strength; discounting his ever-present resilience and steely resolve always tended to backfire. Lanegan joined Queens of the Stone Age during the first half of the 2000s and was an instrumental part of the stoner rock band’s commercial ascent. At times, the pair’s music resembled that of country renegades Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra; at other moments, the contrast between gritty and sweet had far more in common with Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue. A twangy cover of Townes van Zandt’s Snake Song found on their last collaboration, 2010’s Hawk, appropriately enough has more bite than others. Not only does the LP make room for thunderous anthems (the slightly surreal The Gravedigger’s Song) but Blues Funeral contains one of his biggest sonic curveballs, Ode to Sad Disco. Inspired in part by the Pusher movie trilogy from Nicolas Winding Refn – and built up from a synthpop song called Sad Disco by the Danish musician Keli Hlodversson – Ode to Sad Disco is a soft-around-the-edges dance song with gently undulating beats and keyboards. Lanegan initially launched a solo career while still with Screaming Trees. Among his early works: a 1990 collaboration with Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain on a cover of the folk standard Where Did You Sleep Last Night and acclaimed releases such as 1994’s Whiskey for the Holy Ghost. However, Lanegan’s solo commercial breakthrough came with 2004’s Bubblegum. A collaborative effort – guests included members of Guns N’ Roses and Queens of the Stone Age – Bubblegum also features his lone UK charting single, Hit the City, a duet with PJ Harvey that peaked at No 76. On Lullabies to Paralyze’s stomping Burn the Witch, Lanegan wasn’t necessarily the most prominent voice in the mix; that honour went to guest player Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. But his shadowy, raspy vocals are the menacing id of the arid roadhouse blues song – a creepy role, given that the lyrics are a literal retelling of a witch trial that ends with innocents who “burn to ash and bone” after a mob “cries for blood to twist the tale into firewood”. Lanegan’s occasional whispering line serves as a potent reminder that even the truth won’t necessarily save you – or set you free. Accordingly, Long Gone Day is sombre and driven by acoustic instrumentation, namely Martin’s thrumming percussion, although there’s a distinct smoky jazz lounge vibe thanks to freewheeling saxophone from local legend Skerik. Long Gone Day is also an early, prominent example of the brittle, honeyed side of Lanegan’s voice; his meditative vulnerability stands in sharp contrast with Staley’s more extroverted, anguished yowl. Screaming Trees’ 80s albums for revered punk label SST sounded like grimier REM filtered through hissing 70s hard rock; the band’s later association with grunge was a fluke of geography and luck, after 1992’s thrashing Nearly Lost You landed on the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe’s Singles. By 1996’s underrated swansong Dust, Screaming Trees leaned back into their love of psychedelic rock and metal. On the group’s 1995 debut Above, he co-wrote the bittersweet duet Long Gone Day with Staley. The pair passed a piece of paper back and forth between them, building the song’s evocative imagery (“Silver spoons affix the crown / The luckless ones are broken”) line by line.