On 2012’s Blues Funeral, Mark Lanegan veered about as far from his best-known project, Screaming Trees, as anyone might have guessed he could. His voice hadn’t changed—it was the container it came in, a synthesized and stylized sound that made Lanegan’s slurring, bluesy purr seem like rotgut whiskey trapped in a crystal decanter. Since then, Lanegan has circled closer to home; Black Pudding, his collaboration earlier this year with Duke Garwood, is characteristically rich and earthy, and his vocals are almost entirely absent from the icy Like Clockwork by Queens of the Stone Age, his steady side-gig over the past few years. But Lanegan’s latest full-length, Imitations, is more than a retreat into his cracked, battered song-shell—it’s a session of musical regression therapy.That’s not a bad thing. Imitations is a self-effacingly-titled collection of cover songs, with most of the originals culled from Lanegan’s childhood memories. There’s a yard-sale-LP aesthetic to choices like Frank Sinatra’s dulcet “Pretty Colors”-- which Lanegan nails via pinging harpsichord, cascading arpeggios, and a vocal interpolation that’s equal parts shimmering immersion and frigid distance-- and Nancy Sinatra’s James Bond theme, “You Only Live Twice", whose folk-based arrangement owes more to Lee Hazlewood’s lesser-known rendition. No less than three songs by the late crooner Andy Williams-- “Solitaire,” “Lonely Street,” and “Autumn Leaves”-- are chosen, and each is milked of its inherent melancholy. Lanegan wisely doesn’t try to deconstruct Williams’ buttery, easy-listening delivery; instead, he makes it chunky instead of smooth. And his tackling of “Mack the Knife” is audacious in more than concept; one of the most iconic songs of the 20th century is encased in a skeletal, finger-picked hush. Lanegan’s vocal is so subtle it almost fades into the ether, all softened consonants, sanded syllables, and sleepy humming. For a song with such a visceral lyric, it’s a missed opportunity that Lanegan turns it into a lullaby.
The nostalgia isn’t all Lawrence Welk-worthy. Half of Imitations is devoted to relatively newer artists-- the bridge being Gérard Manset. Lanegan’s faithful version of Manset’s spectral “Élégie Funèbre” sounds more like karaoke than a cover-- but it’s wholly redeemed by the fact that Lanegan rasping in French is one of the sexiest sounds the human nervous system could ever steep itself in. From there, Imitations proceeds in time, touching on versions of tunes by John Cale (“I’m Not The Loving Kind”), Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (“Brompton Oratory”), Tindersticks (“She’s Gone”), and Lanegan’s partner in the Gutter Twins, Greg Dulli (“Deepest Shade”). Of the four, “I’m Not The Loving Kind” stands out—a celestial feat of cornball balladry that reconstitutes the freeze-dried heartache of Cale’s original.
Imitation’s opening track spotlights Lanegan’s most contemporary muse: Chelsea Wolfe. The young singer-songwriter’s “Flatlands” is held tenderly in Lanegan’s lungs like an inhaled soul, trickling out slowly through parched lips. As with the Manset cover, the arrangement is nearly untouched; Wolfe’s nerve-wracked, elegantly plucked plea for simplicity is honored in full, even as Lanegan’s scorched-earth baritone devours all sentimentality, muted as it is, in an apocalyptic simmer. With Imitations, Lanegan gives some of the best performances of his career. That he does so with someone else’s material only reinforces the journeyman ethos he’s extolled and embodied since Screaming Trees’ breakup in 2000. Even at the group’s outset in the 80s, though, there was a reverence for tradition-- a yearning for the eternal that helped make Screaming Trees one of the least successful yet most timeless of the grunge movement’s first wave. Imitations may not alter Lanegan’s roundabout arc as a musical itinerant, but it’s a steady reminder of the breadth of his scope and the depth of his roots, not to mention his stature as one of the most potent voices of his generation. Reported by Pitchfork 2 hours ago.