Mark Lanegan Band Phantom Radio LP

Mark Lanegan's chief compositional tool on his ninth solo studio album, 2014's Phantom Radio, was his phone – specifically an app called Funk Box. "I didn't bother to hook up my 909 and 808 this time," he said, "because the app had 'em. I'd write drum parts with it then add music with the synthesizer or the guitar."

The album grew organically from these synthetic roots, taking in Mark's ongoing love of Krautrock and also an '80s new wave show on Sirius satellite radio, his favored aural companion as he drove around Los Angeles. "They have a few good shows but the '80s one in particular I like," he explained. "That's the music that was happening when I started making music. And although the Trees drew on Nuggets psychedelia, 13th Floor Elevators and Love, we were actually listening to Echo And The Bunnymen, Rain Parade, the Gun Club. A lot of British post-punk. We loved that stuff. I just waited until I was in my late forties before I started ripping it off."

Lanegan's generous collaborative spirit saw him deliver an excellent co-write with British guitarist Duke Garwood, with whom he made the dustbowl-desolate Black Pudding (2013), and who here offers the music for "I Am the Wolf," a Lanegan signature tune. Mark's favorite song on the album, meanwhile, was "Torn Red Heart," an intensely tender meditation for a broken heart that's like The Velvet Underground's "Pale Blue Eyes" orchestrated by Angelo Badalamenti. He also had a special mention for "Floor of the Ocean," which balances sheer catchiness with a deceptively bleak lyrical reflection on a life lived on the hard shoulder: "Clear eyes, can't avoid the searchlight/Hope that they don't find me/Find me where I'm lying."

As Lanegan showed on his albums with the Soulsavers, his resonant vocals and dour lyrics can put a lot of flesh and blood on an electronic framework, and he performs the same feat on Phantom Radio. While this music is, for the most part, noticeably simpler and more pop-oriented than his Soulsavers recordings, songs like 'Waltzing in Blue,' 'The Killing Season,' and 'Floor of the Ocean' manage to sound polished on the surface while Lanegan gives them a rough-hewn gravity, fusing the timeless spirit of classic blues and rural folk songs to music clearly rooted in the 21st century.

Where 2012's Blues Funeral allowed a hint of yer actual goth to creep into Lanegan's American gothic, here he indulges the post-punk and electronics he grew up with. His gravelly voice is accompanied by purring, New Orderish synthesisers; the superb 'Floor of the Ocean' could be the Sisters of Mercy covering Joy Division's 'New Dawn Fades.' The subject matter (death, sin, the occasional hanging) is hardly any cheerier, but 'Torn Red Heart' might be the most beautiful love song Lanegan has ever recorded.