The U.K. production duo Soulsavers, a.k.a. Rich Machin and Ian Glover, have found a messiah-like figure in vocalist Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age). Blessing the pair's new record, It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land, is Lanegan's coarse baritone, rattling tracks like a small-scale quake. On "Kingdoms of Rain," the team subscribes to doctrines of sparseness, leaving a meager acoustic guitar, ambient swirls and foreboding keys to back Lanegan's Southern Gothic hymn. A broken prayer, biblical themes extend from the "halos in your hair" to "a cross on the nail." But this "Rain" is not of hope and rebirth -- rather, it's the sort of storm that brews as clouds move in menacingly, leaving things midnight black. And while in the world of guttural, croaking Southern badasses it might be considered sacrilegious to conjure the Man in Black, the resemblance in the body-rumbling weight carried by Lanegan's low sneer is uncanny. Let's just say that if he found himself in Reno, he might be unrepentant and you'd probably want to stay out of his way. It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land drops Oct. 16 via Red Ink/Columbia.
Now Hear This
Soulsavers - "Kingdoms of Rain" WINDOWS MEDIA | QUICKTIME
On the Web:
Soulsavers at MySpace
thesoulsavers.com
Talk: When the 'rain' stops falling, will the Soulsavers' album set your spirit free?
