Let Me Love You Like A Man – Mavrik (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

I have to confess that before I played this new track by Mavrik, I got a little distracted. Why? Because I noticed that he had covered Have You Ever Seen The Rain? Now, I’m a massive Creedance Clearwater Revival fan and that is a cool choice of song, so I just had to check out his version. I’m glad I did as he turned a great guitar song into an equally great piano ballad. So, already feeling favourable towards the artist, aware that he has exquisite taste, I dived into the song in question.

Having noticed that the aforementioned CCR track was from an album of covers, I assumed, wrongly, that this track might be his take on the similarly titled Lana Del Rey song. But no, this is all his own work and great it is too.

It’s a gentle and emotive piano-led track, one where the instrument is inititally used to lay down understated rhythms as the vocals take centre stage. Then once the scene is set and the sonic tone established, he brings in drums to add weight and banks of strings to weave and wash through the spaces between. The result is quite gorgeous. Throw in a middle eight key change, a well-positioned dynamic lull and a gentle fade-out to get the song over the line and you realise that your ears have just witnessed something rather special.

He has a great voice for this sort of song too, soft and soulful but able to hit those high notes with little effort too. Just check out where he goes during the middle eight if you need reminding.

The great thing about having a spin through his covers album first is that I have the perfect reference points to compare this song to. If you had found this track nestled amongst the other great tracks there, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was a number taken from the Great American Songbook, a long-lost classic, a misplaced masterpiece that you had somehow forgotten about. And that is about as great an accolade as you can get really. And if the track sounds like a classic of the past, surely it has all the potential to be a classic for the future?