CD REVIEW REVUE
MARK LANEGAN
I'll Take Care Of You (Sub Pop) ****

first appeared in the Stranger, 9-99
by Rick Levin


Mark Lanegan's voice is a thing unto itself, a certain cursed something spun of good substance then dragged like a dog through its own shit; a gorgeous, growling, tortured beast, drawn and quartered by the four components of a badass, pitch-black personal grief: longing, loss, hypocrisy, self-immolating abuse. The voice tells tales beyond, or despite, the spooky lyrics; the songs' sad stories are almost peripheral to what's really going on. It's the pure, majestic, battered, disembodied rumble and snarl of Lanegan's voice, the gravely refrain, the surrendered crescendo, the furious whisper, that haunts and chills and amazes.

Lanegan's fourth solo album, I'll Take Care of You, is comprised entirely of other people's songs. The 11 covers—which range from the Gun Club's "Carry Me Home" to Buck Owens' "Together Again" to the traditional number "Little Sadie"—are well chosen and fitting, with each song stripped down lovingly to its barest arrangement. These skeletalized selections provide the perfect soundscape for Lanegan's beautiful, heartbroken baritone. The instrumentation, sometimes nothing more than a strummed six-string acoustic, is brilliantly restrained (especially the subtle, intricate guitar work of Mark Hoyt), and the crisp production brings Lanegan's incredible vocals to the fore, without any detriment to the integrity or urgency of the material as a whole. These covers are performed with an obvious sense of reverence, even awe, and yet Lanegan manages at the same time to take complete possession of each one, by virtue of the maturity, balance, and emotional depth of his singing. Because of this, the album is surprisingly coherent. His previous solo efforts have much to recommend them; this one, though, has the feel of a classic.


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