Mark Lanegan

Mark Lanegan’s whiskey-soaked baritone was first heard in the mid-‘80s, leading the psychedelic charge of ‘60s-influenced rockers Screaming Trees, a Washington foursome whose garage-rock moves helped pave the way for the ‘90s Seattle sound. Lanegan came off like the Pacific Northwest’s answer to Jim Morrison and Arthur Lee rolled into one, and as the Trees moved towards a ‘70s sensibility, his craterous tone deepened even further. Never able to muster much mainstream impact, the Trees disbanded in 2000, but Lanegan’s solo career had begun in 1990, with the moody, melancholy The Winding Sheet. Subsequent solo outings with considerable assistance from former Dinosaur Jr. guitarist Mike Johnson found him pursuing a marvelously murky folk-rock sound. Around the time a harder-edged, more Trees-like feel starting emerging in Lanegan’s solo work, he was tapped to add his charismatic bellow to the postmodern hard rock of Queens of the Stone Age. Later, Lanegan formed The Gutter Brothers with former Afghan Whigs singer Greg Dulli, but his most striking collaboration has been playing devil to erstwhile Belle and Sebastian member Isobel Campbell’s angel in a folk-noir duo whose odd-couple dynamic suggests an indie-rock Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood.