Posts Tagged ‘mark lanegan band’

Our Essential Listening 2012 series concludes today with The Albums.

From the ‘cohesion through experimentation’ of Tame Impala’s ‘Lonerism, through the ‘muscular power ballads, stirring, keyboard-led harmonies and call-and-response choruses’ that inform The Killers’ return with ‘Battle Born’, to the ‘sheer magnetism and unwavering belief’ which made ‘Blunderbuss’ such a successful solo debut for Jack White, we feel this rundown highlights some of the year’s truly outstanding releases that everyone should make an effort to check out.

And don’t forget, there’s only room for one place each on our Essential Listening Series, so if your favourite artist of the year isn’t included in this particular rundown, make sure you check through our previous lists to see if they’ve made an appearance elsewhere. And after that, if they’re still nowhere to be seen, maybe you should leave a comment below to let us know about it.

Summer 2012. We’ve just had the wettest June on record, the festival season has been fractured by a series of cancellations, and album sales have fallen in their millions.

And yet, for every music fan, there’ still reasons to be cheerful.

The Stone Roses have just completed – with no major hiccups – the fastest selling weekend of live music in UK history, Blur have deemed us worthy to sample the fruits of their studio labours, some faith in humanity was restored when The Voice had its live tour pulled and, most importantly, for seven months now artists both new and established have been releasing a steady stream of truly impressive albums, proving once again that, if you’re prepared to look hard enough, quality is still out there in abundance.

So, take a look through just some of those releases we’ve pulled together for our latest Essential Listening rundown, and maybe you’ll spot something which will soon occupy a prominent place in your own record collection for the remainder of the year. And when you’ve been through the list, why not do the same for us by leaving a comment below highlighting your own favourites of 2012…so far.

Mark Lanegan is like a liquor-soaked deity, down in the silt, keeping celestial and scrambling for faith.

He sees you, me, himself and reunites us all in song; a great big melting pot of angels, souls intertwining as blithely as smoke moves through the air. His voice, the bruised communicator, relays contempt and corruption consistently, bearing a rare romance that can be compared to few other artists. Similarly to have dragged their heels through the primordial gravels of distinction, have been Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits. Lanegan, Cohen and Waits share a distilled sort of depth, sing about the Lord and bask on their despair with melancholy grace.