Mark Lanegan - Live at the Wolverhampton Wulfrun Hall

  by David McNamee

published: 22 / 1 / 2002

intro

Former Screaming Trees star Mark Lanegan and stoner group Masters of Reality toured Britain together in December. David McNamee describes a disappointing show in Wolverhampton.

And he’s gone rock! Masters Of Reality mainman Chris Goss may physically and sartorially resemble the tea cosy-crested one, but in his head he’s a particularly stoned, particularly evil sibling of Ozzy. Flanked by Queens Of The Stone Age footsoldiers Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri, Goss blasts out fiery, black-lunged stoner hymns from the dark side of the spoon. Nasty, beautiful and - with an extended encore, even for a support band - very epic. Screaming Trees were the band - it sounds horrible to say so, but it’s true – Nirvana would have died to become. The tragedy is that they did, and the Trees were consigned to footnote status. Now a professional loner, former Trees helm and Father of Grunge Mark Lanegan looks like he’s out to prove something. You see, Lanegan has The Voice. A beautiful crushed jewel of a thing that sounds like it’s just risen from the ocean floor. A Waits-ian gravel-throated growl of incomparable loveliness that turns his battered country-blues into majestic rolling peaks of epiphanies and damnations. It’s just a shame that the awful muso-metal backing band drain all the cold-eyed joy from ‘One Way Street’ and other gems from Lanegan’s recent ‘Field Songs’ LP. Even the soul-scarred ‘I’ll Take Care Of You’ buckles under the weight of heavy-handed guitar solos. Give him a microphone, a bottle of J.D. and an empty stage and the man can work magic. Maybe it’s time he considered what going ‘solo’ really means.

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