"Oh sister of mercy," intones Mark Lanegan on his first solo set in seven years, invoking Leonard Cohen, Andrew Eldritch, and countless other gothy dudes with a taste for dysfunctional relationships. Minus usual vocal sidekicks Isobel Campbell and Greg Dulli (who appears briefly on the vintage drum-machine jam "St. Louis Elegy"), Lanegan's chafed baritone works best with bold backdrops, like the dark synth-pop of "Ode To Sad Disco," which pushes his growl into weird Bono-Zooropa territory, and the monster-truck swagger of "Riot In My House," basically a Queens of the Stone Age jam with ex-bandmate Josh Homme. Some singers sound best when they socialize.

Listen to "The Gravedigger's Song":

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• Photos: Random Notes

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.