Grunge rock is often perceived as evil or deliberately presents itself as such - think of songs like Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun".

The Screaming Trees, next to the two aforementioned ones another grunge band that apparently grew on trees in Washington State in the late 1980s and early 1990s, has suffering and pain in its name - but it sounded like it did in its better-known songs Not so bad at all, in "All I Know" in 1996 she was even quite close to the cheerful Britop.

Jan Wiele

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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While their singer Mark Lanegan at least advised to log off the phone and otherwise unplug, there was merry dancing.

But he wasn't exactly a joker at the microphone, which was particularly evident in his solo career.

Anyone who still had doubts knew it at the latest with the record "Dark Mark Does Christmas" (2020), on which Lanegan destroyed Christmas carols.

Born in Ellensburg, Washington in 1964, he had already had a number of difficult years, which he also described in his volume of memoirs “Sing Backwards”.

However, the biographism to explain his music does not always have to work, as obvious as it seems.

Because the dark mood, which appeared fairly undisguised on the first solo album "The Winding Sheet" released in 1990 (supported by the Nirvana musician friends), Lanegan later also has something playful about it.

On his "Field Songs" released in 2001, for example, and especially in the collaborations with the singer Isobel Campbell, you notice that. "We die and see beauty reign" breathe the two on the album "Hawk", released in 2010, Sebastian's voice floating miles above his baritone

With more electronics and more blues, but very similar in style, his collaboration with Duke Garwood for the album "With Animals" (2018) also sounded.

Many other connections and surprises could be mentioned in the career of this daring musician, who was also surprisingly well connected.

Over the years, his voice has come closer and closer to Tom Waits' old voice - that too may underscore its theatrical character, as it was last heard on the deep black "Straight Songs of Sorrow" (also 2020).

In 2021 Lanegan suffered a corona infection - and also wrote a book about it, "Devil in a Coma".

It is a drastic, hard-boiled style account of the intensive care unit, the abused human body and mental states between semi-conscious and insane.

In dream descriptions, the recorder sees himself reunited with "several and ex-girlfriends and ex-wives" under one roof in Seattle or in a California home with a long-dead, beloved dog.

Mark Lanegan died on Tuesday in Killarney, Ireland, where he last lived, at the age of 57.