Phantom Radio

Description

With Phantom Radio, composed with the help of the mobile phone app Funk Box, it is the Mark Lanegan Band of Blues Funeral (2011) that makes its return, a year after the duo interlude - with Englishman Duke Garwood - of Black Pudding (2013). The leader with the raspy voice does not change his (good) habits, and it is not without a sly pleasure that he wraps his modern blues in harmonies and electronic rhythms, as a counterpoint to gloomy stories. Haunted by the specter of small and large death, from “Judgement Time” to “Death Trip to Tulsa” via “The Killing Season” and other delights, Phantom Radio scatters its dark subject matter with strong, and sometimes luminous, melodies, like those of “Harvest Home” or “Floor of the Ocean.” In the end, it matters little whether the backbone is invariably metronomic or whether the synthetic sounds have replaced the screeching of guitars (lurking in minor keys), because the ten songs of this unsettling walk - count five more for the limited edition - stand perfectly on their own, like the innocent “Seventh Day,” the magnificent “Torn Red Heart,” or “I Am the Wolf,” a funeral elegy summed up by this sentence: “I’ve been dying since the day I was born.” Further on, it is a majestic lament, “Waltzing in Blue,” that revives memories of a vanished love, in a concert of guitars, synthesizers and choirs. By visiting his buried feelings and confronting them with the darkness of nightmare visions, Mark Lanegan succeeds in transcending his subject through dazzling inspiration, avoiding the trap of self-pity.