Mark Lanegan LIVE @ Islington Assembly Hall, 29.11.2013

It’s hard to believe that, until a couple of years ago, the Islington Assembly Hall was being used as a storage facility, yet for 30-odd years, this gorgeous 1930s theatre essentially served as an oversized filing cabinet for the town hall next door. Fortunately for north London gig-goers it has now been resurrected, and is enjoying a second coming as a grand yet intimate venue for the likes of Tim Burgess, Valerie June, and Fionn Regan. I can’t help but think that it seems a particularly appropriate choice for Mark Lanegan – after all, this is a man who survived the hard living of grunge and a stint with Queens of the Stone Age, coming out the other side to explore his more fragile side on solo records and in his work with Belle & Sebastian’s Isobel Campbell. Like the venue he’s playing tonight, the guy’s got quite a few lives under his belt.

The Assembly Hall is dolled up like a wedding in some kind of fancy jazz club – all velvet-upholstered chairs and twinkly blue lights – as the opening acts come out. Lanegan’s keeping it in the family tonight; opener Lyenn and follow up Duke Garwood are both members of his backing band, and like the big man himself they both have a nice line in melancholy acoustics. Garwood released an album, ‘Black Pudding’, with Lanegan last year, and holds the audience’s attention with ease during his set of southern-tinged blues.

When Lanegan hits the stage after a short break, the atmosphere is hushed and almost reverential, and this is testament to the high regard in which Lanegan’s fans hold him. Backed with guitars, bass, drums, and even a string section, that inimitable gravelly voice launches straight into ‘When Your Number Isn’t Up’, from 2004’s ‘Bubblegum’, and then follows through into a few more standouts from ‘Field Songs’ and ‘Blues Funeral’. But Mark Lanegan’s been a busy boy lately and has got better things to do than just rehash old solo records, so next up for the audience are several numbers from ‘Black Pudding’. The music is itself is by turns eery and sparse (on ‘War Memorial’), woozily harmonic (‘Driver’), and even at times downright funky (‘Cold Molly’). ‘Pentecostal’ is beautifully sparse and introspective, owing more to early country and spirituals than you might think; Lanegan seems to be in a pensive mood too, hunched motionless and protective over the microphone.

And there are still more surprises to come – surely the last thing people are expecting now is a Frank Sinatra cover, but that’s what they get. The rest of the set draws from his recent covers album ‘Imitations’, and to be honest it’s a slightly surreal – but thoroughly enjoyable – experience. ‘Pretty Colours’ is followed by a version of ‘Mack the Knife’ like none you’re likely to hear any time soon, transformed into a melancholy lullaby. ‘You Only Live Twice’ and Neil Sedaka’s ‘Solitaire’ also get the Lanegan treatment, and that famous Tom Waits-esque growl starts to sound quite uncannily like Leonard Cohen (perhaps a sign of what we can expect in the next ten years or so??). But it’s his timely cover of ‘Satellite of Love’ that gets the most adoration from the crowd, and before long the band are heading backstage.

They come back out for just one last song – a gorgeous version of Screaming Trees’ Halo of Ashes, bringing us back to where it all began.  After all, Mark Lanegan may have grown up – and I have to admit he looks pretty good in a tweed blazer – but someone as rock and roll as him can’t stay away from it for long.