"Hellfire and compassion"

In some ways, Mark Lanegan's death at the age of just 57 should have come as little surprise. After all, this was a man who - as he revealed in his brutally honest and self-excoriating 2020 memoir Sing Backwards And Weep - started drinking at 12 and only escaped alcoholism by switching to heroin.

And yet, having survived the lowest of lows - and also fought off COVID last year (as recounted in Devil In A Coma) - it was still a major shock to learn that he had lost his life. The Guardian's Kitty Empire noted in her review of Devil In A Coma that "[h]e ... seemed absurdly immune to death" - but this was "a characteristic that the musician refused to mine for macho points but, rather, regard[ed] as some imponderable state of undeserved grace".

This is an important point. After getting clean, Lanegan essentially became a different person.

Even to this long-time fan, the warmth and sheer volume of tributes seemed remarkable. As riveting a read as Sing Backwards And Weep is, it doesn't paint its narrator in a good light. Lanegan comes across as a troubled, hard-to-love individual who must have caused carnage in the lives of those in his immediate periphery. The final two Screaming Trees albums Sweet Oblivion and Dust - both exceptional - were created amid this chaos, with a band he detested.

But, as Jude Rogers notes in her partisan yet clear-sighted piece for the New Statesman, this is not the man and the period for which Lanegan would want to be remembered.

On the contrary, we should commemorate his solo records, from The Winding Sheet to Straight Songs Of Sorrow.

We should celebrate his many and varied post-Trees collaborations, from the natural partnership with Afghan Whigs' Greg Dulli as Gutter Twins, to the unlikely Nancy-and-Lee alliance with Belle & Sebastian's Isobel Campbell, to the recent pairing with former Icarus Line man Joe Cardamone under their Dark Mark & Skeleton Joe aliases.

We should recall the undimmed passion for music and generosity of spirit that saw him go from Hey Colossus mailing list member to vocalist on one of their songs.

And, of course, we should pay tribute to that extraordinary barrel-aged baritone.

As Rogers says, "Let's allow the spirit of his last years to define him."