You know that feeling when you listen to an artist and you think to yourself: crikey I’ll bet they’ll be great live? It’s difficult to shake when you listen to Marcus King.
Whether it was with his eponymously named band or in his now solo guise, King is one of those people who pulls off the neat trick of managing to sound like nothing else, yet everything else.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the fuzzy opening groove of “It’s Too Late” could have come out at any point since Elvis legged it into the Studio that day, and still sounded like it belonged.
There’s a soul to his music. There’s a groove to his music. But there’s more. There’s a screeching skill to the sound. The solo, played on his old man’s 1959 Les Paul underlines the fact that this is a rock a roll record. I nearly wrote “just” a rock n roll record, but that is to damn it with feint praise. Rock n roll might well be the most important thing in this world. “Young Blood” understands.
“I let her win and I still don’t even know why” he sings on “Lie Lie Lie” and the answer is as obvious as the fact that this is a stunning record: You let her win because you want her, and that is the primal reason for all rock roll to exist, surely? One way or the other, male or female or anything else. That’s rock n roll’s purpose.
Even the blues ones are ramped up this time around. “Rescue Me” sounds like it’s still in the late 1960s, but it builds and there’s some real emotion here. “Pain” is shot through with a desperation but its more than that. It recalls The Cold Stares, and its harnessed some darkness from somewhere.
“Good And Gone” has a bit of a 70s glam groove (anchored as it is around a riff that has echoes of “Children Of The Revolution”) and the way this artist is developing is shown with “Blood On The Tracks” – its sort of hippy flavoured and deals with King’s depression. But it is written with Desmond Child (Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and about a million more) and you best believe that hook soars, baby. It flies.
“Hard Working Man” is so good it could be a long lost ZZ Top track (I’ll give you CCR or Georgia Satellites at a push). He plays 200 odd shows a year so it might be autobiographical, it doesn’t matter, because this is blues with a purpose. Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys produces again and it sounds like he’s got an understanding that few match. You can certainly here the Keys in “Dark Cloud” – one of many that directly reference King’s mental health struggles.
The three piece band for this has a chemistry and the drums that underpin the whole album, are stage front on “Whisper” and if “Blues Worse Than I Ever Had” is one of the rawest things he’s done, then it has a sweet soul flavour. It’s what Marcus King does, he doesn’t fulfil your expectations. He is far too good for that.
This album is the best thing he’s ever done, for sure. And If I said something similar last time, then that’s because “Young Blood” is the work of an artist who is hitting new peaks as he matures and pours more of himself into this music. And on those stages he’d be even better, I’d wager.
Rating 9.5/10