Considered in the moment, the Mark Lanegan Band’s new album “Blues Funeral” seems the perfect antidote to today’s falsetto-wielding pop stars and harmony-high folkies. Of course, Lanegan’s moment has been going on for nigh three decades now, from his early work with grunge gods Screaming Trees to collaborations with Queens of the Stone Age, the Twilight Singers, the Gutter Twins, Soulsavers and Isobel Campbell. And he’s never sounded more real than he does on his first solo album since 2004 — the 47-year-old possesses a voice that conjures up more horrors than Stephen King, and over the course of 56 minutes, “Blues Funeral” feels like you’re having a staredown with a skeleton. The album, out Tuesday on 4AD, was made with Alain Johannes and Jack Irons in L.A. and features contributions from Greg Dulli and Josh Homme. Opening track “The Gravedigger’s Song” is spooky in two languages, and director Alistair Legrand of The Masses has sculpted marvelously vivid imagery for it. Y’all sleep tight, now.
||| Download: “The Gravedigger’s Song”
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||| Live: The Mark Lanegan Band plays Thursday at the Echoplex.
