MARK LANEGAN is a busy musician. His earliest fans will remember him as lead singer for Screaming Trees, one of grunge’s foremost bands. Since those days he’s shone, becoming a comfortable, intelligent listen alongside the likes of Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp. But it’s been 8 years since his last solo release because of his 3 (wonderful) duet albums with Isobel Campbell (Belle and Sebastian) and other projects, Soulsavers and The Gutter Twins.
Blues Funeral has little to do with the genre but rather Mark’s atmospheric representation of images and convictions. His lyrics may sometimes be obscure 
but they’re as gravelly sincere as the tone of his voice. You can’t help but want to share the depths of lines such as “Muddy Water, celestial flood, you know i feel, you in my iron lung” and “A mountain of dust burns in your mouth. Here there’s no north, just south.”
Despite the by gravity of ‘St Louis Elegy’, rocking in ‘Riot in My House’ or electronically based in ‘Ode to Sad Disco’, MARK LANEGAN’s Blues Funeral is a beautiful, flowing whole. Along with those songs mentioned, other highlights include ‘The Gravedigger’s Song’, ‘Bleeding Muddy Water’ and ‘Harborview Hospital’.
