On to other covers, You Ain't No Picasso has continued to share some interesting artists doing other artists, recently unveiling an Arcade Fire collection including their covers of Springsteen, Pixies, Violent Femmes, The Clash, Lennon, and so on. Check out YANP's covers archive for more collections for Spoon, Decemberists, and of Montreal. Some of them are live and the sound quality is not for audiophile purists, but there's definitely some cool and unusual song choices. Hearing The Decemberists and/or Colin Meloy solo doing Robyn Hitchcock, Heart, Bjork, Cheap Trick, Squeeze, The Soft Boys and more makes me appreciate The D's even more. And I love Spoon, so anything's appreciated, but Guided by Voices, The Kinks, Wire, Julian Cope covers, among others? No wonder Spoon turned out so durned good. And included in the My Morning Jacket collection? INXS's Never Tear Us Apart. Is INXS cool these days?
Whole albums of covers can be hit-and-miss affairs. Bowie's Pin-ups album was pretty good, but it was arguably done at the peak of his powers, whereas Duran Duran put out their covers album, Thank You, after their comeback album. Both records were probably done to get something out there without the pressure of writing enough new material, but Bowie's was full of fire and passion, while Duran Duran's just sounded tired. Def Leppard put one out not too long ago which was similarly mediocre.
So doing a whole album of cover songs can be a risky proposition. It can seem like the easy way out, especially if slavish imitations add nothing to the original versions. Peter Gabriel recently released Scratch My Back, his own covers album. One would be hard-pressed to argue that Gabriel is at his creative apex, since aside from soundtracks, he releases a pop/rock record every 8 or 10 years these days.
Then again, Gabriel is not Duran Duran or Def Leppard, he's always done things in his idiosyncratic way. Scratch My Back is no different,since he decided to record the whole thing with orchestration intead of stock rock instrumentation - no guitars, no drums, for example. Gabriel has also managed to get the artists he's covered to record a Peter Gabriel song, except for David Bowie, who is busy hibernating (supposedly Brian Eno is going to reciprocate in Bowie's stead). So far, Bon Iver has covered Come Talk to Me, Stepehn Merrit (Magnetic Fields) has covered Not One of Us, and Paul Simon has done Biko. I've heard rumblings that Arcade Fire and Radiohead might not get their songs done, but we'll see.
Heroes (David Bowie) The Boy in the Bubble (Paul Simon) Mirrorball (Elbow) Flume (Bon Iver) Listening Wind (Talking Heads) The Power of the Heart (Lou Reed) My Body is a Cage (Arcade Fire) The Book of Love (The Magnetic Fields) I Think it's Going to Rain Today (Randy Newman) Apres Moi (Regina Spektor) Philadelphia (Neil Young) Street Spirit (Radiohead)
As far as cover songs revealing an artist's true rock geekdom (see previous post), Beck's gotta be the king. His record club features him and whatever cool musician-type buddies are around (like Wilco, Feist, MGMT, Giovanni Ribisi [!], etc.) covering not just one song, but entire albums - three so far, recently started fourth. The recording is videotaped and posted to his site song by song. Here's the official explanation:
"Record Club is an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. The album chosen to be reinterpreted is used as a framework. Nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week. The songs are rough renditions, often first takes that document what happened over the course of a day as opposed to a polished rendering. There is no intention to 'add to' the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens."
Beck covered Skip Spence's Halo of Gold previously on the tribute album More Oar, so obviously he's enamored of Spence's Oar, which is a rock nerd signpost. The Velvet Underground and Leonard Cohen fit the rock snob yardstick too, but go to the bottom of this post if you want to see how the club's tackling some records that don't necessarily have the most street cred or cool factor.
The newest album being covered is INXS's Kick. Interesting choice, but Beck says Ace of Base's The Sign had previously been kicked around as a possibility, so anything goes.
My favourite Beck cover has to be his version of Gram Parson's Sin City. I went to get it to share with you, but I found that I had already shared my disc with a friend and hadn't got it back. I'll post it soon, check back - it's worth waiting for, believe me.
mp3s will be posted for a limited time and are for promotional purposes only. If you like it, buy the albums, go to the shows, buy the t-shirts - support the artist so they can keep on keepin' on. Artists - if you would like an mp3 or video removed, please contact me directly at chrisyakchart@hotmail.com.
If you've got something Scruffy should hear, same email. Snail mail is cool too.
Scruffy the Yak 34 Allenby Cres Winnipeg Mb R2C 3J4
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