Though not renowned for his love of interviews, the evening we spoke by phone in early August Mark Lanegan was in a surprisingly talkative mood, recounting stories in his creamy baritone, even peppering them with the occasional hearty laugh.
The clarity of the 53-year-old's recall may have something to do with the fact he’s spent the day in his Los Angeles garage working on his upcoming memoir, Sing Backwards And Weep, due for a 2020 release.
The former Screaming Trees frontman undertook the project at the urging of celebrity chef and longtime friend Anthony Bourdain, who prior to his death in June would read passages and give Lanegan feedback. Charting a 10-year period from the late 1980s to the late '90s - when the Washington State-born singer had a drug addiction and was living in Seattle - writing it is, he says, a “joyless affair”.
Lanegan’s has also been a life spent creating. Over the past two decades he’s released albums with Queens of the Stone Age, Isobel Campbell, Soulsavers, the Gutter Twins and more, and his 10th solo album, Gargoyle, came out last year. He’s just finished recording its follow-up, Somebody’s Knocking, due for release in 2019. A double album recorded in 11 days, it sees Lanegan continuing to experiment with the electronic elements that have crept into his brooding, bluesy solo work since 2012’s Blues Funeral.
He won’t be performing any of this new material on the Australian tour, partly because he’ll be in stripped-back mode with just a keyboardist and guitarist. Which might, you think, open the way for a little bit of storytelling between songs.
This time, Lanegan doesn’t laugh.
Mark Lanegan is at Thorbury's Croxton Bandroom in Melbourne on Saturday, September 15; the Triffid in Brisbane on Monday, September 17; and Factory Theatre in Sydney on Tuesday, September 18.