The first time I heard this album was in FOPP in Aberdeen (in Scotland, that is, as opposed to the city in Washington State, USA). The record shop (independent at the time, pre-HMV takeover) was in McCombie’s Court, in a basement off a back street of the Granite City centre, between the Netherkirkgate and Union Street, the main drag. I walked into the shop and ‘When Your Number Isn’t Up’ started up – It was as if time was standing still, the slow, dark, brooding keyboard-driven intro causing all life to stop and pay attention…”Did you call for the night porter?” THAT deep, gravelly voice asked over the track and it was then that I knew that I had to own this album. My longtime friend SM was on shift so I asked him what was playing, he told me and I duly purchased the CD.
The cover is black, with only the text ‘Mark Lanegan Band’ in white in the top right hand corner. It’s one of those albums where the record company felt the need to add a sticker on to the jewel case of the CD, because of the lack of information in the graphics, not even stating the title of the album…The sticker says ‘MARK LANEGAN BAND ‘BUBBLEGUM’ The new album from the singer with Screaming Trees and QOTSA – inc. Methamphetamine Blues, Hit The City and Sideways In Reverse. BBQCD 237’. Black is black, black is the colour of my true love’s hair? Black suits Mark Lanegan…When I have seen him live, with Queens Of The Stone Age, with his band and with Isobel Campbell, the spotlight doesn’t pick him out on stage, instead he’s the void where there is no light, he’s the darkness that sucks all the light from the venue…
The cast of musicians on this recording is impressive, drawn from ‘alternative’ and more ‘mainstream’ rock on both sides of the pond: including south coast UK dark singer/songwriter PJ Harvey, Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri of Queens of the Stone Age, Dave Catching of Eagles Of Death metal, Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs, and Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin of Guns N’ Roses. Lanegan’s ex-wife, Wendy Rae Fowler also appears, playing piano on the opening track and singing backing vocals on four other songs.
The album is quite eclectic, opening with the sombre, moody ;When Your Number Isn’t Up’, with it’slate night feel, conjuring up images of an unshaven barfly in a dark ‘spit and sawdust’ pub or an enigmatic loner on their way home through dark city streets in the rain…’Hit The City’ crashes in to wake us up from that contemplative dream, Lanegan informing us that ‘Dark descends on the promised land…” with PJ Harvey providing suitably unsettling harmony vocals. The tempo drops for the hypnotic ‘Wedding Dress’ Lanegan asking his woman to don her garb from their big day so they can forget all their sadness and sorrows, quoting Johnny and June’s Cash’s ‘Jackson’ at the end, the day they ‘got married in a fever’..
‘Methamphetamine Blues’ is driven by an insistent industrial-sounding beat, layered grungy guitars with lead licks by Josh Homme and snippets of backing vocals by Wendy Rae Fowler panning back and forth. Lanegan describes a drug-induced heaven that he ‘don’t wanna leave so soon’ as he’s ‘rollin’ just to keep on rollin’…
“When the willow bends to the end of days” croons Lanegan over a languid backing, rocking us back and forth, evoking the ship that comes in every day…“there is no morphine, I’m only sleeping”. The tune paints a picture of a rough crew in a town on the shore – cigarettes, ashes, women working the streets, more drugs and ‘something good’ – One day their ship will come in…in ‘One Hundred Days’?
A short duet by Lanegan and his former wife Wendy Rae Fowler, backed by acoustic guitar, ‘Bombed’ is as close as it gets to the title track: “When I’m bombed I stretch like bubblegum, And look too long straight at the morning sun” they harmonise, another downbeat Waits-ian homage to lowlife, perhaps set in some Southern swampland, or a dusty mid-West desert landscape near a small deadend town…
‘Strange Religion’ is another slow dreamy, uneasy piece with Guns’N’Roses stalwarts Izzy Stradlin and Duff McKagan on vocals, before the full-on rock of ‘Sideways In Reverse’, Lanegan telling us that he’s “going down going down people give me your love”. PJ Harvey is back on vocals for ‘Come To Me’, slow with a dark, country feel, the two harmonising as ‘time takes a while’ – As in much of the album, time seems to stand still in fact, the imagery timeless and no-one seeming in any hurry…which doesn’t change for the bluesy ‘Like Little Willie John’, gospel-like organ by Dave Catching creating a haunting, eerie backing, like we’re in some old black-and-white movie…very atmospheric as Lanegan recalls the tales of woe. “Don’t give a damn for money…the river runs deep and cold” Is Lanegan high again – He can’t come down again, that’s for sure. Maybe some ‘Morning Glory Wine’ will help, featuring ‘electrocution’, ‘blind injection’ – well, maybe not, ‘good people don’t drink it’…”So sad the girl I had, Lost her head and it went bad, Blue her two eyes they were dead” – no redemption in ‘Head’ either and definitely none when you got the ‘Driving Death Valley Blues’ where ‘Jesus is high on the mainline’ and Lanegan ‘don’t wanna go cold turkey’…Yes, we’re heading through the desert dust of Devil’s Postpile past Furnace Creek in a clapped out automobile with a trunk full of drugs, the stoned-out ex-lawyer crashed out in the back seat clutching his shotgun…
Mark Lanegan adopts his most angelic vocal tones on the beautiful outro:
“As it begins so too it ends
Crawls to a stop and starts again
Those highlights you’ve forced to shine
Show me my way through wilderness
And someday far from here I’ll send a kiss
Out of nowhere…”
It’s a heartbreaking end to the sepia-toned Western epic that is ‘Bubblegum’, as the credits roll, and the cast of characters is revealed, mostly a veritable who’s who of US desert rock and California cool, the leading ladies including the star’s ex-wife and a raven-haired songstress from the English southern coast…If you’re feeling bitter, like life’s dealt you a losing hand, maybe you’ve just lost all your wages in a poker game, your girlfriend has left you or your dog up and died…Put ‘Bubblegum’ on the stereo, pour yourself a few fingers of bourbon in an old cracked, stained glass, light yourself a cigarette on the open campfire and maybe you’ll find some solace in this post-millenium masterpiece by the incomparable Mark Lanegan and his band…
‘Bubblegum’ tracklisting:
When Your Number Isn’t Up
Hit The City
Wedding Dress
Methamphetamine Blues
One Hundred Days
Bombed
Strange Religion
Sideways In Reverse
Come To Me
Like Little Willie John
Can’t Come Down
Morning Glory Wine
Head
Driving Death Valley Blues
Out Of Nowhere
‘Bubblegum’
Originally released: 2004
Label: Beggars Banquet
Recorded at: various locations 2003-2004 – see sleeve notes
Produced by: Rick Will, Alain Johannes and Mathias Schneeburger – see sleeve notes
Personnel:
A huge cast of musicians! – see sleeve notes
References, quotes and photographs:
1. Mark Lanegan Band ‘Bubblegum’ CD
2. McIver, J. (2005). ‘No One Knows – The Queens Of The Stone Age Story’. London: Omnibus.
Eddie's Rock Music A-Z 