When Mark Lanegan sings he takes me places. His voice is one of the most expressive in rock music. He writes about degradation and loss and writes about it beautifully. The Twilight Singers are renowned in underground circles, but tonight Lanegan is a major draw card.

He joins the band about a third of the way through their set. He receives a terrific welcome. He does not wave. He does not smile. He doesn’t look like a rock star. The fierce chords of Sideways In Reverse kick in and away we go. His eyes stay closed. The chorus says everything about the man that, at one level, is no longer true: “Going down people/Give me your love”. Mark Lanegan is in demand. His reputation precedes him. Pretty soon they’ll be calling him a legend.

The Twilight Singers. Intense. Unfunny. Eager to please. They belong on stage. They tour almost endlessly. At some point in the set I decide there’s too much electric guitar and begin hoping they’ll ease up a fraction and allow silence and space to Greg Dulli’s lyrics. It’s a bruising and punishing sound and tonight the mix is muddy. They’re not funky at all. Even the sound check was scary. This is serious man.

After Sideways In Reverse they play I’ll Take Care of You, which segues into Where Did You Sleep Last Night? Massive Attack’s Live With Me as a dirty rock song is a minor revelation. Then Lanegan disappears and the differences become apparent. Without him The Twilight Singers’ brand of rock is more generic. Their alternative blues edge is less apparent.

Yet The Metro is quite packed tonight for the band’s first visit and after hearing about this band – these characters – for years, it’s great enough to have them playing in front of me. At that moment the pressure eases and you just kick back, put a drink on the stage and relax.

We take a break and go for a smoke on George Street. There I meet the world’s biggest Mark Lanegan fan. He knows everything and brought his crystal ball. He tells me we won’t be seeing any more of Lanegan tonight. I tell him he’s wrong and after a few quick drags I ditch the street. Moments later he’s sprinting past me as the encore begins. Mark’s voice is so low it can walk itself down a flight of stairs and bury itself beneath the earth. We can hear it through the city noise on George Street.

The finale is a giant, dreamy epic of a song with Dulli and Lanegan sharing vocals. It’s a beautiful moment and a tad underwhelming when the lights came on and the show was over. Rather like hitting a birdie on the 18th in golf, now was the wrong time to stop.

Later that night I tried to leap a 10-foot wall and forgot to leap. The cuts and blood I woke up to seemed a fitting emblem for the evening gone. The Twilight Singers are not for the faint of heart. I sensed everyone wanted Mark Lanegan to hang around longer, but I think we went home happy enough to hear him sing five or six songs with a savage band on a warm Saturday night.

Click here to see the pics from the gig