HEAVENLY
Gloomier in tone than 2013’s predecessor Black Pudding, Duke Garwood once again provides the dark backdrop for Mark Lanegan’s solemn prose and velvety vocals on the 12 tracks that make up their second collaboration, With Animals. Trippy opener Save Me sets the agenda with its pulsating ambient loop, feeding Lanegan’s hypnotic: “C’mon now midnight children, sing a dark harmony…” My Shadow Life invites the infinite twilight when: “Stars burn out as they hang by a thread”, while on One Way Glass, Lanegan offers: “Something lonelier than death”.Ghost Stories develops a haunting atmosphere; Upon Doing Something Wrong wallows in its own sublime sorrow; while the eerie whistle weaving through the spectral Lonesome Infidel echoes that of The River Rise from Lanegan’s 1994 sophomore solo album Whiskey For The Holy Ghost. Rather than exorcising any ghosts from the past, Wild Animals looks forward and breathes new life with its sumptuous American-gothic soundscapes.