Mark Lanegan: Imitations (Heavenly/PIAS)

 |   |  <1 min read

Mark Lanegan: She's Gone
Mark Lanegan: Imitations (Heavenly/PIAS)

Pity anyone collecting the complete works of Mark Lanegan who not only runs a solo career but has been a gravitas-filled voice in Screaming Trees, QOTSA, the Gutter Twins, Soulsavers, Twilight Singers, on albums with Isobel Campbell and, just four months ago, Black Pudding with London multi-instrumentalist Duke Garwood.

Here he covers a moody selection of songs which include a sensitively spare Mack the Knife, Hall and Oates' She's Gone (given an oblique but lovely MOR treatment) and material associated with Frank Sinatra (and Nancy in the case of the Bond theme You Only Live Twice in a simple acoustic guitar setting), Andy Williams (whom he rightly considers one of the great voices) and Nick Cave (Brompton Oratory).

Most of these songs (many gently steeped in strings) he heard as kid, others – like his fine interpretation of John Cale's I'm Not the Loving Kind – came from his formative years.

This isn't up – or more correctly down – there with his last solo album Blues Funeral, but he often finds new meaning in old lyrics (Lonely Street, Autumn Leaves) which shift it from a vanity project into dim-light territory.

Very playable but perhaps interesting more than essential.

Unless you collect Lanegan.

If Mark Lanegan interests you there is a lot of him at Elsewhere starting here

Share It

Your Comments

Dean Allen - Sep 19, 2013

"She's gone" is not the Hall & Oates' song but is by Vern Gosdin, apparently a favourite singer of Lanegan's parents. GRAHAM REPLIES: Absolutely right. I could not have been more wrong. Thanks.

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Bannerman: Dearly Departed (Bannerman/Rhythmethod)

Bannerman: Dearly Departed (Bannerman/Rhythmethod)

Recorded in the same furious sessions as his previous release The Dusty Dream Home (considered "an outstanding album" at Elsewhere in 2010, see here), this companion volume as it were... > Read more

Sun Kil Moon: Among the Leaves (Caldo Verde)

Sun Kil Moon: Among the Leaves (Caldo Verde)

With only a few exceptions – John Lennon's emotionally excoriating Plastic Ono Band springs to mind – the album-as-catharsis is more interesting for the artist than the audience.... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

LEE SCRATCH PERRY IN THE 90s: Getting dub'n'reggae through time tuff

LEE SCRATCH PERRY IN THE 90s: Getting dub'n'reggae through time tuff

By the early 90s - a decade on from the death of Bob Marley - the consciousness reggae movement he headed was floundering internationally. In New Zealand, where reggae is one of the bloodlines, it... > Read more

ROBERT FRIPP INTERVIEWED (1990): The economic man at work

ROBERT FRIPP INTERVIEWED (1990): The economic man at work

The only sound in this small foyer is a huge fly buzzing monotonously and occasionally slapping itself into the windows. Peter, one of the guitarists studying at this retreat in Howick whispers... > Read more