The twelfth album by American singer Mark Lanegan is the soundtrack to his autobiography Sing Backwards And Weep. The book in which he deals with his life, riddled with hard drugs and other excesses, until the early noughties, full of regrets and feelings of guilt towards, for example, his great friend who must have sought contact with Lanegan shortly before his suicide. It is therefore not surprising
… that Straight Songs Of Sorrow became an inky black record, i.e. the former singer of at best. In purely strong songs in which both the bluesy undertones of his early solo work and the electronics of his later records resound, he speaks out his heart with his characteristic smoked baritone voice. Confession albums can sometimes sound boring and inward looking, but with the help of , violinist and bassist , Straight Songs Of Sorrow became an extremely solid and moody album. (MR)more