Record: Saturnalia (Sub Pop Records, 2008)

In a more visionary world than we will ever experience, Mark Lanegan’s I Am the Wolf: Lyrics & Writings (Da Capo Press, 2017), with its insider notes from the magic mountain where some of his songs came from, would have by now been greatly expanded to incorporate a more complete record of this colossus recording artist’s output as writer, songwriter, and lyricist. Perhaps it might even include revealing excerpts from his terrifying memoir, Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir (Hachette Books, 2020), about his early creative longings and self-destructive obsessions. And Devil In a Coma (White Rabbit, 2021), his hallucinogenic sickbed-diary chronicle of a near fatal case of COVID-19 in 2021. Addiction narratives seem to indulge the voyeuristic and distorting gaze. We always want more.

Mark Lanegan died in February 2022 at the age of 57, two years after moving with his wife to Killarney, Ireland.

Missing from these brief revelations of Lanegan’s confessional record must be countless notes and fragments about songs from the eccentric number of his side projects: The Twilight Singers (also with Greg Dulli), Queens of the Stone Age (with his close friend, long-suffering benefactor, and bandleader, Josh Homme), Soulsavers, UNKLE, and even Tinariwen, the desert mystic Tuareg musicians from northern Mali, and many more.

Lanegan was a man in a manic search for escape most of his life. He hated rednecks and Ellensburg, Washington, where he grew up, in equal measure. His first attempt at real freedom was the profoundly dysfunctional band, The Screaming Trees. Ironically, this broken 1980s grunge-era association for Lanegan retains top billing in many retellings of Lanegan’s origin story and beyond. Again, in a more generous world, the large body of his significant solo work that followed, including his many outlier collaborations with other friends and recording artists, should be the real story of his creative monument.

Lanegan’s project with Greg Dulli as The Gutter Twins, and their one full-length LP of original material, “Saturnalia” (Sub Pop, 2008), is at once confessional and confrontational as it is lyrical and deeply moving — random reunion of sympathetic artists, or a fleeting regeneration for both? Revisiting it now, after 16 years, feels as fresh and important as it was in 2008. Of course, 2008 was when the subprime mortgage meltdown destroyed a bus load of faith for each of us and gave the world the cynical Great Recession. It was easy to overlook a few good times in art.

Greg Dulli was the perfect creative twin, born far from the deadening heat and punishing agricultural anvil of Eastern Washington, in Ohio in an area known for Chicago-style gangsters, paper mills, and heavy manufacturing. His ongoing sonic project, The Afghan Whigs, formed in the late 1980s in Cincinnati (I know from personal experience the Whigs are one of the loudest bands to perform on stage, a sound so great it’s a spectral presence). While periodically going on hiatus, the Whigs have managed to produce 9 brilliant studio albums. Dulli also created another band, The Twilight Singers, when he had some down time, and this band has now racked up 7 records of its own. It’s fun to speculate on why Lanegan was drawn to Dulli. He gets shit done. So far, we don’t have a memoir from Dulli to help us untangle the tsunami of his many obsessions and creations. The output, however, is overflowing with archeological clues.

As a creative pairing, Dulli could keep the wheels on. Lanegan probably never wanted to handle the paperwork, he just needed someone to get all the right people in the room when it was time to turn on the microphone. What made Dulli and Lanegan so good together was their complementary journeys through obsession, addiction, and darkness. They each paid for their access.

As The Gutter Twins, they could work through some of their darker shit together. They could also bend their creative energies into something new. One senses Lanegan was incapable of small talk even when he was relaxed in his happy place. Being seismically gifted probably didn’t make him any easier to deal with.

Today, after all these intervening and difficult years, we get to rediscover and marvel at “Saturnalia” as fresh in 2024 as it was in 2008, 12 songs created by two artists on a record that remains a defining and moving document for both. While all the songs possess aspects from their other projects, when taken as “twins” separated by diverse artistic goals and tastes, these artists fold into a natural and mutual introspection, if only for this fleeting moment.

Standout tracks like “The Stations,” “God’s Children,” and “Idle Hands” feel deeply rooted in The Afghan Whigs catalog, while others like “Who Will Lead Us” and “Bête Noire” feel like what Lanegan would eventually expand into a template for his most original and timeless solo LP, “Blues Funeral” (4AD, 2012). “Saturnalia” was a brief moment when two artists could pull something private back from the void just for themselves.

As one final note, it remains difficult to get your hands on a vinyl or even CD copy of “Saturnalia,” which is a great shame. How about a Sub Pop repress for Record Store Day on rustbelt tarnished gold wax? One more reason to blame 2008 for ruining everything.

And another final note, for those who deeply mourn the passing of Mark Lanegan as I do, his heartbreaking Sing Backwards and Weep was also produced in 2020 as an audiobook read by the author. The conversational tone of his book, when read by Mark himself, feels as if he’s in the room with you talking about some of his most painful, embarrassing, and overwhelming life experiences that made him the complicated, brilliant, and willful artist he became.

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Credits

“A Sign” / photograph by Austin Chan on Unsplash.com
The Gutter Twins / photo from the band’s Sub Pop PR webpage

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