I envy Mark Lanegan's voice. It's one of the few perfect things in a horribly imperfect world. If I thought I could get away with it, I might even kill for his voice. At the very least I'd have my minions strap him down to a gurney while my private surgeon performed a vocal transplant. No singer in recent memory has a voice that causes such dastardly thoughts to bounce around in my brain. Sadly, I have no minions, no surgeon, and no one has gotten such a transplant to take Ñ yet.

No matter what the setting, Lanegan's voice sounds great. It sounds great in a heavy rock song. It sounds great with spare acoustic accompaniment. Hell, it would sound great echoing through Lenny Kravitz's colon. So, not surprisingly, it shines on Field Songs, his fifth solo album.

After weeks of deep listening, Field Songs has become my favorite Lanegan record. Most of the music has this very cool, loose, druggy feel. I'll chalk that up to cell memory, since Mark and several of the musicians who join him are now sober (but still unclean, thank God). Longtime cohort Mike Johnson (ex-Snakepit, Dinosaur Jr) and relative newcomer Ben Shepherd (ex-March of Crimes) do the bulk of the electric, acoustic, and bass guitar work and flesh out Mark's songs with stunning arrangements. Synth and backward guitar snake around dark acoustic guitars on "She Done Too Much" and "One Way Street." Engineer Martin Feveyear provides droning organ to a similar effect on "Low" and the killer instrumental "Blues for D."

Initially, a couple of the songs ("Pill Hill Serenade" and "Kimiko's Dream House") came across a bit sappy, a bit too obvious, but after these many listens, I like them better than any of my so-called friends. My one remaining complaint is that on many occasions, as soon as a song kicks in and the music really takes off, it fades. I would love to hear where he was going with it.

And then there's that voice. Have I mentioned it yet? Every time I think about it, I start to cry.

Mark Arm plays rock and roll with Monkeywrench and Mudhoney. He recently turned to the lucrative field of music criticism to help pay for his trip to the International Space Station.