Legendary for his Elvis Presley-like croon since his Misfits days and frequently dubbed “The Evil Elvis,” Glenn Danzig was, perhaps, destined to pay direct tribute to one of his biggest influences. But Danzig Sings Elvis arrives too late by several decades, as the quality of Danzig’s singing has long declined. And even when he comes close to matching the King’s vocal virtuosity, he isn’t able to make the songs much his own.
Though Danzig has become something of a pop-culture cartoon due to his gothic self-seriousness, mocked in everything from YouTube parodies to Tom Neely’s homoerotic comic book series Henry and Glenn Forever and Ever, he was, at his peak, one of the most dynamic vocalists in rock history. He was capable of channeling Elvis as well as Jim Morrison and the Righteous Brothers when crooning dark, brooding balladry or bellowing raging metal anthems. His voice, however, sounds more than a bit strained here.
This decline was evident on 2017’s Black Laden Crown, which magnified the issue with a mix that pushed Danzig’s vocals to the foreground and laid them bare with little to no reverb. Danzig Sings Elvis presents a similar problem, and not just in its subpar production and mixing. Typically resting on the basic combo of gentle, vibrato-heavy guitar strums and whole-note piano chords, the album’s arrangements offer fitting homage to the unfussy instrumental style of early Elvis, the one almost exclusively represented on the album’s tracklist (only two post-1960 songs, “Always on My Mind” and “Loving Arms,” made the cut). But they also shine the spotlight even brighter on Danzig’s vocals, to mixed results.
Danzig starts off on solid footing, warbling “Is It So Strange” with confidence and gusto. He also does justice to ballads such as “Lonely Blue Boy” (recorded by Elvis under the title “Danny”) and “First in Line,” the scratchiness of his vocals infusing the songs with a melancholic vulnerability. The uptempo numbers, though, don’t fare as well. On “Fever,” one of pop music’s sexiest songs and one that Elvis rendered intensely sultry, he just sounds tired.
In fact, returning to the original versions of these songs after listening to Danzig’s renditions is to once more appreciate what a preternatural vocalist Elvis was. Say what you will about his controversial cultural legacy, Elvis oozed brooding sexuality in almost everything he sang, and with such cool and effortlessness that he transformed hundreds of songs he didn’t write into natural extensions of his larger-than-life persona. In contrast, there’s just too much flop sweat on Danzig Sings Elvis: Tracks like “Baby, Let’s Play House” and “Girl of My Best Friend” come across like caricatures of Elvis as Danzig attempts to recapture his hero’s youthful vitality.
The purpose behind this album is unmistakably sincere. But at the time that Elvis recorded gems like “Pocketful of Rainbows,” his voice was rich, smooth, and capable of conveying a multitude of emotions. At this point in his own career, Danzig may still be able to approximate Elvis’s vocal range, but he fails to invest these songs with a unique vision. The songs here are a far cry from the seductive rockabilly of “I’m the One” or the haunted balladry of “Sistinas,” which nodded to Elvis while conjuring a world of Danzig’s own eerie invention.
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