It's a hard fact that many musicians inspired by the blues have been unable to transcend the genre and find their own voice. Kevn Kinney of Atlanta's Drivin' n' Cryin' and Mark Lanegan of Seattle's Screaming Trees have both released second solo albums in an effort to achieve emotional catharsis by digging into their musical roots.
Kinney has unplugged all the way down to a bare guitar and vocal (a few of the cuts feature an electric guitar and one, a string bass), while Lanegan eschews his band's psychedelic fuzz for the late-night misery the best blues always evokes. Kinney's Down Out Law sounds like a sharp companion to the Phil Ochs, Eric Andersen and Bob Dylan albums of the
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early 1960s, when Woody Guthrie and Jack Kerouac were the crucial influences. Lanegan's
Whiskey for the Holy Ghost arrives at the blues by copping its mood instead of its riffs, relocating its soul from the Mississippi Delta to the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest.
Down Out Law begins with a simple folk tale of a singer who had a band and now "will play for beer." Kinney's voice is slightly twangy, almost tuneful, always of the earth. The second cut, "Save for Me," resembles Dylan's "Girl From the North Country" in the singer's romantic plea to "take from me this broken heart/Show me that you love me still." "Tell Him Something for Me" stirs up memories of the Vietnam War era: Kinney sadly states, "You are not forgotten."
Whiskey for the Holy Ghost mines the same territory that Lanegan's first solo album, 1990's The Winding Sheet, staked out. Again, the acoustic guitars are strummed plaintively, but Lanegan's foreboding growl has gained resonance. The arrangements are richer, the mix fuller – everything from violin to saxophone and organ – suggesting that Lanegan has been taking note of other albums imbued with great personal effect, from Van Morrison's Astral Weeks to Tim Buckley's Lorca. Though recorded over the past few years, the album sounds as if it were laid down one cold night while the scotch flowed freely and the girlfriend was as good as gone.
The range of emotions Lanegan's voice expresses is absolutely jarring. He communicates through pure sound. There are the shrieks of otherworldly angst that echo the barrage of dissonant guitars on "Borracho," the mournful inflections that match the weeping violins of "House a Home," the quiet whispers of defeat that permeate "Kingdoms of Rain."
Including appearances by members of Dinosaur Jr, Mudhoney and Tad, Whiskey for the Holy Ghost goes a long way toward making a case for these musicians as more than one-trick grunge ponies. As for Lanegan, Whiskey solidifies his status as king of the Seattle blues singers. The competition may be meager, but in sheer artistic terms, he'll prove hard to beat. (RS 680)
ROB O'CONNOR
