Mark Lanegan’s Bubblegum Receives 20th Anniversary Reissue

4LP/3CD set due out August 23rd on Beggars Arkive

July 24, 2024July 24, 2024 Ron Hart 0 Comments 2004, Beggars Arkive, Beggars Banquet, Bubblegum, Bubblegum XX, Josh Homme, MARK LANEGAN, Screaming Trees, Troy Van Leeuwen

The late Mark Lanegan’s solo career is spread across the catalogs of several prominent indie labels, from Sub Pop to Vagrant to 4AD to Heavenly.

But it was Beggars Banquet who delivered the former Screaming Trees frontman’s finest solo LP in 2004’s Bubblegum, which the label’s Beggars Arkive offshoot will be releasing as a 4-LP/3-CD deluxe edition on August 23rd. The revamped collection will contain 40 tracks, 12 of which have never been officially released until now.

Bubblegum XX comes housed with a 64-page book featuring essays by a host of notable Lanegan pals, including Troy Van Leeuwen, Josh Homme, Chris Goss, Alain Johannes, David Catching, Greg Dulli, Duff McKagan and Brett Netson along with studio notes and previously unseen photographs by Steve Gullick.

The set includes a version of Bubblegum remastered at Abbey Road, the iconic London studio where Lanegan was booked to record a new album at the time of his death. With the help of Geoff Pesche, this reconfiguration of Bubblegum posthumously grants Lanegan’s two wishes of enhancing its original mix, which the singer was never satisfied with, and working on the project in a studio he always dreamed of working in.

Mark Lanegan Band Bubblegum XX, Beggars Arkive 2024

When Bubblegum was released on August 2nd, 2004, Mark chose to let it speak for itself and didn’t have much to say about it aside from within the small handful of interviews he did at the time. In 2017, he released a book of lyrics and writings called I Am The Wolf and wrote about the album then. Shared here are his words about Bubblegum and its companion album, Here Comes That Weird Chill, also included as part of the new reissue with three bonus tracks tacked on.

“Man, this is becoming like a scene out of A Beautiful Mind . . . and not in a good way,” said mix producer Rick Will, and I knew what he meant,” he wrote. “I had been awake for days and nights, crazed from no sleep and illegal stimulants, and was sitting cross-legged on the studio floor with sheets of paper covered in handwritten lyrics, notes, and ideas strewn out around me in a ten-foot circle. While I had been out of my mind making records in the past, this was a new peak… or low, depending on one’s perspective. For months I had been using the off-time from my gig as an auxiliary singer with Queens of the Stone Age to try and complete a record, but as usual, my own insanity would not allow it. When it was all said and done, I recorded enough for two records, with the title of the first coming from something Greg Dulli said while shuddering involuntarily in the suddenly cold wind walking to my car after a Twilight Singers recording session, and the title for Bubblegum coming from a lyric in the song ‘Bombed.’ Song favorites include ‘Skeletal History,’ where I tried to channel the free-form vocalisms of SST band Saccharine Trust to chart the skewed evolution of my own damaged species, ‘When Your Number Isn’t Up,’ and ‘Strange Religion,’ a love song I wrote in a Tokyo hotel room. While many of the songs came from a place of dejection and ennui at the end of a tempestuous relationship, ‘Bombed’ in particular came about when, after I had written and recorded it in just a few minutes, I put a microphone in front of Wendy Rae Fowler, my soon-to-be-ex-wife, and had her sing along while simultaneously hearing it for the first time. I loved the result as it reminded me of Royal Trux, a band I liked. When I insisted on using the first and only take of the song, it made her slightly unhappy, but to be fair, that was just one of many things I did that had that effect.”

The fourth LP (or third CD) contains demos and unreleased tracks, made up of outtakes from the Bubblegum sessions along with tracks recorded, produced and mixed by Troy Van Leeuwen in various hotel rooms with Mark singing and Troy playing all the instruments.

“So these hotel demo sessions were basically forgotten,” Van Leeuwen explains of the hotel recordings. “When I heard the news of Mark’s passing, these memories started rushing back to me. I searched through my archive of drives and somehow magically was able to open up these sessions. I thought to myself, ‘That NEVER happens.’ These ideas couldn’t be more fresh out of the tap. The original rough mixes are a real time capsule that stands up to the 20 years that have passed. It’s a true gift from Mark to those of us who love him and his unvarnished expression of beauty. With every listen, I am humbled and honored to share his gift with you.”

Also among the rarities is “Union Tombstone,” a song that Lanegan had sent to Beck 20 years ago but he was unable to record at the time on account of him working on his own album. For Bubblegum XX, Beck added new vocals and harmonica to the song in tribute to his fallen friend. The set was executive produced by Mark’s former manager Brian Klein, who worked with him during the Bubblegum era. You can find the full tracklisting is below.

The original Bubblegum album will also be available separately as a double LP, titled Bubblegum XX, on transparent red vinyl and will be available via indie retailers and the Beggars webstore, while standard black vinyl will be available everywhere.