Mark Lanegan – I’ll Take Care Of You
Listening to Mark Lanegan on a bright, shimmering Saturday afternoon just seems so…wrong. Better to wait until you’re half shot-out at 2 a.m. the following Sunday morning and let the guy’s somber aura just wash over you. But since my days don’t regularly bleed into mornings, and I live in California, bright and sunny it must be.
This is OK, though, as there is a slight brightening of the corners on I’ll Take Care Of You, an all-covers record from a guy whose deep, distinctive register was bound eventually to deliver such a collection. Of course, the “brightening” is relative to the context, though supple interpretations of Southern R&B classics was not exactly what I was expecting.
Reassessing things, though, maybe it should have been. In delivering Bobby Bland’s title track and Eddie Floyd’s “Consider Me”, Lanegan displays a soul missing from the contemporary R&B charts for quite some time. Both songs find Lanegan working in a higher vocal range than is the norm in his solo work; it’s quite striking to hear him almost coo his reassurance over vibe and organ underpinnings in the former and, backed by a simple guitar line and sax-work, vulnerably plead for acceptance in the latter. On a similar thematic tip, also check out his elegantly rendered take on Buck Owens’ “Together Again”.
More along the lines of what I was expecting are tunes by ’80s L.A.-scene compatriots Jeffrey Lee Pierce (“Carry Home” from the Gun Club’s Miami) and Falling James (“Creeping Coastline Of Lights” from Leaving Trains’ debut, Well Down Blue Highway) Both James and the late Pierce shared Lanegan’s affinity for a dark and anguished amalgamation of rock, blues, folk and country. Then there’s the extensive Greenwich singer-songwriter axiom, with unsurprising but effective nods to Tim Hardin (“Shiloh Town”), Fred Neil (“Ba Da Bee”),Tim Rose (“Boogie Boogie”) and Dave Van Ronk (the traditional number “Shanty Man’s Life”).