Rock veteran Mark Lanegan, former Screaming Trees frontman and whiskey-voiced human avatar of hard-living wisdom, has a couple of new things coming out. One is a memoir. Sing Backwards And Weep, Lanegan’s book about his own knotty and often-perilous life, is coming out this spring. Another is a new album. Shortly after the memoir hits shelves, Lanegan will follow up Somebody’s Knocking, the 2019 album from his Mark Lanegan Band, with a new solo LP called Straight Songs Of Sorrow, and the first single is a good one.

Street Songs Of Sorrow, which Lanegan wrote immediately after he’d finished with the book, features guests like the Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli (Lanegan’s former partner in the Gutter Twins), the Bad Seeds’ Warren Ellis, Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, and the singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt. First single “Skeleton Key” is an expansive seven-minute blues-rocker that makes full use of the heaviness that’s always been at the heart of Lanegan’s voice.

In a press release, Lanegan says:

Writing the book, I didn’t get catharsis. All I got was a Pandora’s box full of pain and misery. I went way in, and remembered shit I’d put away 20 years ago. But I started writing these songs the minute I was done, and I realized there was a depth of emotion because they were all linked to memories from this book. It was a relief to suddenly go back to music. Then I realized that was the gift of the book: these songs. I’m really proud of this record.

Listen to “Skeleton Key” below.

Straight Songs Of Sorrow is out 5/8 on Heavenly. Lanegan’s memoir Sing Backwards And Weep is out 4/28 via Da Capo Press.