With
the Screaming Trees an increasingly distant memory and his brief tenure with
Queens of the Stone Age seemingly over and done,
Mark Lanegan appears to have well and truly become a solo artist, and while the dark and
blues-shot introspections of
Whiskey for the Holy Ghost and
The Winding Sheet felt like a respite from
Lanegan's usual musical diet of the time,
Bubblegum sounds like an effort to fuse the nocturnal atmospherics of his solo work with the impressive brain/brawn ratio of his better-known bands. Credited to
the Mark Lanegan Band (though there's no consistent set of musicians from track to track),
Bubblegum is hardly short on the moody stuff, with
Lanegan's nicotine-buffered pipes leading these songs though any number of empty streets and unhappy events, as on the jonesed-out road trip of
"Strange Religion," the pained drift of
"One Hundred Days," and the wasted longing of
"Morning Glory Wine" -- notice a common theme yet? (Oh, and in case you were wondering, the album's title refers not to teen-centric
pop music, but a line from his song
"Bombed": "When I'm bombed, I stretch like bubblegum/And look too long straight at the morning sun.") But
Lanegan was also of a mind to rock out a bit while making this album (or figured that his newer fans were expecting it of him), and with his
QOTSA pals
Josh Homme and
Nick Oliveri helping out on a few cuts, he does indeed deliver the
rock, most notably the clanking menace of
"Methamphetamine Blues," the straightforward bash of
"Sideways in Reverse," and the organ-driven ooze of
"Hit the City" (the latter featuring
Polly Jean Harvey in an inspired duet appearance). But while most guys making a solo album after a stint with a successful band create music that speaks of freedom and release,
Bubblegum finds
Lanegan digging ever deeper into the obsessions and appetites that drag him into the same corner every time. It sure doesn't sound like a life most of us would wish to lead, but it makes for damned compelling art, and the dank emotional caverns of
Bubblegum offer some territory well worth exploring for the strong-willed. ~ Mark Deming
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