"This one's a toe-tapper.....swear to God!" He's lying, but who cares? Armed with only a pale blue Telecaster, some vibrato and a clutch of stark confessionals, MIKE JOHNSON solo exists in a lonely backwater a million miles from his past as DINOSAUR JR's bassist, but on this evidence it's a place worth pulling up a chair and slugging down in a beer in if he has more songs of the quality of "Dirty Hands" and the resolutely non-toe-tapping "Only For Today."
Johnson soon reappears to take his placeas lead guitarist with MARK LANEGAN. Although best recalled by most as either vocalist/leading light with the terminally under-rated SCREAMING TREES or, more recently, as guest growler with Josh Homme's QUENS OF THE STONE AGE, Seattle's favourite brooding son really oughtta get more kudos points for his fantastic solo work.
With this year's customarily-ignored masterpiece "Field Songs" as a case in point, Lanegan has little to declare eexcept his dark, malevolent genius.
The blasted folk-blues terrain the album inhabits tonight blown apart by this dense,visceral, live'n'loud incarnation;Johnson's searing guitar squalls spurring the amazingly wel-drilled band (second guitar, drums and bassist with the silliest mohican this side of David Beckham) to new heights o sonic valhalla as the set steams on. Truly, this is revelatory stuff.
Typically, Lanegan says little throughout. Standing stock still, he's a constant smouldering presence, smoking furtively like a schoolboy behind the bike shed and wrapping those gravel'n'honey tonsils around chunky,mid-paced holy rollers like "Don't Forget Me" to the woozy, trance-like chords of "Miracle", which circles vulture-like as Lanegan sings "You baby...go straight to my head" in the kind of tones that would make Nick Cave wet his pinstripe trews at five paces.
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There's only a couple of sustained punkoid overload selections; a particularly damning "No Easy Action" and a breathtaking extended piece bringing to mind the best of the Screaming Trees' uber-psychedelic aspirations that closes the main set. Lanegan also excavates "Gospel Plow" from the Trees' "Dust" (the "Nevermind" that never was?); its' mantra-like intro and Led Zep swagger gloriously intact, yet it doesn't outshine the tenderness of "I'll Take Care Of You" or "Pill Hill Serenade"'s delicate soul kiss.
Clocking in at an all-too-brief one hour (even allowing for the three encores), tonight Mark Lanegan left us gagging for a lengthier fix of his rich,heady magic, but after such a brain-bogglingly great show, such quibbles drain away like grains of sand. Lord send us more talented enigmatic bastards like this. Our souls need nourishment of this calibre far more often.
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