Music
Phantom Radio
Alt-rock vet makes a grimly beautiful record on his phone
Since his days fronting grunge-era rockers Screaming Trees, baritone growler Mark Lanegan has pursued a raw, doomy primitivism. This is a 21st-century version of the same: Phantom Radio was recorded using an iPhone drum-machine app called FunkBox, and it sounds like a solitary dance party in a serial killer's backwoods shed. "Smelling the incense of/The perfume of your blood," Lanegan rumbles over a trip-hop beat on "The Killing Season." As creepy as this can be, there's also a grim beauty; on "Torn Red Heart," Lanegan sings about heartbreak and salvation and stakes his claim as the Leonard Cohen of the alt-rock moaners.