"Over the course of an hour, Straight Songs unloads a lifetime of pain. But there is a happy ending to this story. Whereas much of the album has him merely "hanging on", by Eden Lost And Found - a track built from a mobile phone recording of his wife messing around with an old Casio keyboard - he has embraced survival and moves towards his new dawn with, if not quite piranha teeth, then a mischievous, Cheshire cat grin"

"In summary, Straight Songs of Sorrow contains an excellent half-hour of music within its hour-long runtime. Death albums are fairly common in recent years. To the degree that Lanegan has chosen to tie his memory to songs about that subject, at his best, he's a master of the form. However, it's important to know when to edit"

"Mark Lanegan has the voice of a man who's seen some shit - and it turns out that Mark Lanegan has indeed seen some shit. That much is evident in his new memoir, Sing Backwards And Weep, which is frank about his youthful search for "decadence, depravity, anything, everything" and refuses to flinch from the guilt he still carries around the death of his friend Kurt Cobainʺ