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Blues Funeral is the Mark Lanegan Band's first album since 2004's Bubblegum, and it picks up more or less where its predecessor left off, setting Lanegan's brooding, imagistic lyrics against ethereal keyboard and guitar textures and mostly mid-tempo beats.

Lanegan's never exactly been Mr. Sunshine, but Blues Funeral is grim even by his standards; the line "hangman is following me" from "Leviathan" pretty much sums up the tone throughout. When the album does break form - as on the Screaming Trees-ish rocker "Riot in My House" and the clubby "Ode to Sad Disco" - it only serves to break the tension before returning to the darker, more deliberate sounds that define the set as a whole.

That said, Lanegan applies more varied sonic flourishes than he has in the past, making Blues Funeral a more interesting listen than some of his previous post-Trees recordings, which have bordered on the monotonous. What sounds like a mellotron provides counterpoint to sawing cellos in "Leviathan," which ends with a three lines sung by three voices in a round, building an almost hopeful conclusion to the otherwise desolate tune. And "Ode to Sad Disco" is built on "Sad Disco," a dance track by Danish artist Keli Hlodversson; Lanegan and multi-instrumentalist Alain Johannes build on the original's pulsing keyboards with guitars that alternately shimmer, soar, and dive. It's unlike anything Lanegan's ever done, and it points in a direction that he'd almost certainly be wise to follow on future projects.

DOWNLOAD: "Gray Goes Black," "Ode to Sad Disco" ERIC SCHUMACHER-RASMUSSEN