For most of the 2000s, Mark Lanegan has been a wandering samurai in search of a master. He released only two solo full-lengths and an EP this decade, and those have been handily overshadowed by his hired-gun work with Martina Topley Bird, Melissa Auf der Maur, and the Baldwin Brothers, as well as his collaborations with Greg Dulli and Isobel Campbell. He could easily take the lead on any of these projects, but Lanegan seems to think we'll like him better in small doses. That, or he's planning a sort of Yojimbo double-cross that will pit the Twilight Singers against Belle and Sebastian.
Who knows where Soulsavers would come out in such a melee? The British duo-- Rich Machin and Ian Glover-- are something of an unknown quantity, especially on American shores. They formed in 2003 as an electronica outfit specializing in remixes for bands iike Starsailor and Doves. Their distinguishing characteristic seems to be their fascination with American traditional forms, texturing their songs with buzzy threads of blues, gospel, folk, and jazz. Reportedly, touring behind their second album, It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land, shifted their priorities even further, away from programmed beats and toward live instrumentation to create a cinematic atmosphere on Broken, their third album and second with Lanegan.
If How Far You Fall was formatted to fit your screen, then Broken is in CinemaScope. Spaghetti-western strings swell and shiver on "Shadows Fall", guitars grind vigorously on the Gene Clark cover "Some Misunderstanding", stray synthesizer blips shoot through "Death Bells" like sparks, and a lone piano provides an almost gothic solemnity on the Palace Brothers cover "You Will Miss Me When I Burn". The record features a sizable cast that includes Jason Pierce of Spiritualized, Mike Patton of Faith No More, Richard Hawley, and Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, and Australian newcomer Red Ghost, aka Rosa Agostino. Entering late in the album, she makes a good supporting actress, her smooth voice a nice compliment to Lanegan's rougher textures on "Rolling Sky". Perhaps she'll get more screen time on the sequel.
Lanegan, however, remains our main protagonist, roaming Soulsavers' musical landscape mostly in isolation. His miles-of-bad-road voice is an obvious match for Soulsavers' gothic Americanisms, and he sounds like just another instrument in their arsenal, communicating meaning via sound more than lyrics. That's a good use of him, especially when his lyrics veer toward Biblical overstatement, as on "All the Way Down" when he sings about "crystalline dawn" and "six white horses." Also, there's this gem from "Can't Catch the Train": "Sure as the shovel is blind, deaf, and digging/ One day you're alone at the end of your road."
And that's perhaps the problem with Broken: Too often its soundtrack atmosphere is too thick, its arrangements as obvious as a painted backdrop. The strings sound too much like Morricone, and "Wise Blood" recalls the quieter moments from Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman's score for The Last of the Mohicans more than the John Huston movie. On "Unbalanced Pieces" the whispered backing vocals dogging Lanegan have all the spooky effect of a horror trailer, and the menacing bassline is both seedy and Bad Seed-y, which only reinforces the unflattering comparison with the recent soundtrack work of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. In trying to literalize the often dismissive term "soundtrack rock," Soulsavers emphasize the former to the neglect of the latter.
