My love affair with Mr. Lanegan began nearly thirty years ago when I first heard The Screaming Trees exquisite “Sweet Oblivion”. At that point grunge was getting boring for me, it had lost the organic power that made it so vigorous and vital. Then suddenly this album came into my life and I fell head over heels in lust with Mr. Lanegan’s baritone gruffness. Since that moment he has been my constant musical companion.  

I have visited in on his collaborations (Soulsavers and the Gutter Twins to name two), his curiosities (the three wonderful albums with Isobel Campbell), his cameo’s (Queens of the Stone Age) and his never-ending conveyor belt of solo albums of which this is the 13th.  

“Straight Songs of Sorrow” is fuelled by his memoirs, which transcripted his various near death experiences. This is a brutally honesty (but quite brilliant) treaty on his own mortality. Across the fifteen tracks he regularly wonders aloud why he is still here, and it is that painful existential soul-searching that makes this such a captivating record. It is as dark and disturbing as any of the Black Metal on this list and proves beyond any reasonable doubt that you don’t have to be Metal to be heavy.