When I was in Nashville last month, I stumbled upon Brendan Benson and Cory Chisel playing an afternoon set to a packed crowd at Grimey’s record store (surely one of the coolest music meccas on the planet). There was free beer (Magic Hat?) being handed out for the price of free, and it was as if I had slipped over to heaven for an hour there amidst the music.
Brendan Benson is noted these days for his role in The Raconteurs, and I had only ever seen him in that lineup, never solo. But his solo music tends towards the irresistibly solid power pop, never silly, always completely delicious and substantial. I took some videos for y’all that I’m just getting around to uploading on this sunny Saturday:
And finally – covering Tom Petty’s “American Girl”! Brad Pemberton (of Ryan Adams’ Cardinals, Patty Griffin‘s band, and the Alternate Routes, among many others) rocking the drumkit, too.
I didn’t go to Benson’s show that night at the Exit/In, but ended up across the street. Standing on a rainy sidewalk outside the venue, I could see in past the packed crowd to watch him play “What I’m Looking For,” before we ran off into the night. It was a fine capper to a wonderful weekend.
In the same way that when she covers Hallelujah, she is clearly covering Jeff Buckley’s version of Leonard Cohen’s song, when Washington singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile took on “Mad World” at Portland’s Schnitzer Hall last Thursday night, she was wailing her way through Gary Jules’ unsettlingly sad version (from Donnie Darko) of the Tears for Fears song.
This gives me chills; sometimes I wander away from listening as much to her as I used to a few years ago when her stunning first album came out, but then I am reminded all over again of that voice and how much brutal raw emotion she can squeeze into three minutes. She has a marvelous new album Give Up The Ghost that she is touring in support of, and still manages to always pick out some of my favorite songsin the world to cover. We’re, like, music soulmates.
Whereas the original song (by British electropop duo La Roux) is all sheen and hard candy shellac, Lou Barlow‘s interpretation of it is almost haunting. For me when I hear the original, it feels like sparkly nights out dancing, and the lines that stand out are the ones about “been there, done that, messed around, I’m having fun, don’t put me down.” She’s bulletproof the way a cartoon superhero is; she doesn’t bleed real blood.
But here Lou takes it and turns it inside out, makes it echo with all the empty space. When he vows, “this time baby, this time I’ll be…bulletproof,” I find that I don’t believe him, any more than I ever believe we can completely seal off our hearts as hermetically as we’d sometimes like.
I’m coming up only to hold you under
I’m coming up only to show you wrong
and to know you is hard,
and we wonder…..
The original Band of Horses song “The Funeral” is a shimmering, gorgeous cascade that always reminded me of watching waves break, or a beam of sunlight shoot through the clouds – direct and powerful. Breathtaking when it explodes around that 1:20 mark.
But there’s something in those lyrics that catches in the back of my throat, that I must admit gives me pause with its undertones of… vengeance? Sadness? Regrets? It’s never been more prominent to me than the way Serena Ryder takes this song and makes it her own. Her voice is a powerful creation that feels muted here, but channels a hint of Janis Joplin, or more recently the marvelous Samantha Crain. This recording comes from a 4-song EP of covers a la Cat Power.
I am entranced by her throaty alto re-creation — smoky and restrained, and yet so terrifically mournful.
Serena is from Toronto and this year has brought tours with Ingrid Michaelson, Paolo Nutini, and Pete Yorn. Her album is it o.k. is out November 3rd, and she plays Denver’s Bluebird on October 27th.
There are certain songs that I wouldn’t necessarily call guilty pleasures, because they are well-written pop songs, but rather — it never stops feeling somehow indulgent to enjoy their toe-tapping majesty this much.
The amp-kicking Superdrag hit “Sucked Out” (from 1996′s Regretfully Yours) remains a song I still like to hear, and when Brendan Benson covered it last week for his Daytrotter session, I was delighted. Benson and Superdrag share similar songwriting chops in consistently solid pop genius, oft-overlooked.
This is a song that Benson has been covering live in concert this summer, and it’s nice to have a clean recording (for free, at that!). The session also gives us three songs from his current album My Old, Familiar Friend (including the creepy melancholy of “Feel Like Taking You Home”).
My friends over at WXPNin Philly are always in the process of doing something cool. Case in point — this week they’ve assembled 29 of their best local artists to cover Bruce Springsteen in honor of his SIXTIETH (yes) birthday tomorrow.
Greg Laswell is one of those San Diego/Los Angeles-types, with a few well-crafted orchestral albums under his belt (including 2008′s How The Day Sounds EP). For his latest endeavor, he’s turned to reinventing some of what I consider to be modern classics.
On the forthcoming Covers EP (Vanguard Records, October 6th) Laswell tackles Echo & The Bunnymen, Morphine, Mazzy Star, Kate Bush and one of my favorite songs from Throwing Muses’ Kristin Hersh. From her debut solo album Hips and Makers (1994), the original haunting incarnation (no pun really intended) featured the distinctive crack of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe on background vocals. When I sing it, I switch around from his part to hers. See what you think of Greg’s (KCRW liked it enough to make it their song of the day a few weeks ago).
Today we got our first listen into the solid forthcoming album of covers of Mark Mulcahy’s songs, Ciao My Shining Star, a benefit album for this wonderfully rich songwriter in his hour of financial need (his wife died, leaving him with small twins to raise).
The lead off track is an icy reworking of “All For The Best” by Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke, and we’ll get to that in a sec, but the one that caught my eye even more quickly is the new cover from The National. I’ve loved this song below for a few years now, and I am flabbergasted at how much the original just sounds like a National song now that I listen to it through that filter. I think this will be the “Sleep All Summer” of my fall – both versions are equally addictive. The closing strings on The National’s version actually caused my chest to hurt.
With the backbone of Mark Mulcahy‘s solid songwriting, this covers album looks to be one of the best ones out in 2009 (tied with Dark Was The Night). The roster of artists featured is incredible: Thom Yorke, The National, Michael Stipe, Ben Kweller, Frank Black, Liz Phair, Vic Chesnutt, Elvis Perkins, and more.
So who is Mark Mulcahy and how did he inspire so many of my favorite artists? I first heard of him through Nick Hornby’s Songbook, when he wrote, “I would have missed out on people like Mark Mulcahy, whose first album, Fathering, I bought [on the recommendation of a music shop proprietor], and played repeatedly for months. ‘Hey, Self Defeater,’ the first track … made it onto just about every compilation tape I made that year.”
Mulcahy was also the artist behind the 90s band Polaris, from the TV show The Adventures of Pete & Pete. It was some of the best music ever to hit Nickelodeon — sugar-pop at its finest. I’ve re-upped the previous post with Mulcahy’s songs from the cassette tape you could get from saving Frosted Mini-Wheats barcodes. They are deceptively good for something from a kids show.
Since being introduced, I have come to respect Mulcahy as a literate first-class songwriter, and this song from his band Miracle Legion first appears simple, yet is laden with ache and meaning in the smallest of moments, like watching a sibling cut grass and the overwhelming monotony of life that can imply. The jangly effect of the original reminds me quite a bit of some of my favorite things about late-80s R.E.M or The Smiths. Thom Yorke’s version is distant electronica, layered all crisp and sad and perfect.
From the new EP of George Harrison/Beatles covers by My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James (under the clever, throw-them-off-the-scent moniker of Yim Yames), this song feels like a much-needed salve on my rawness today:
Sometimes I am glad I don’t know the fancy tricks of studio recording, and how they make Jim’s voice sound like it is coming to me from somewhere outside time, like it was created to someday record this song about the temporal nature of the evening, a cloudburst, love, our lives.
I’m sure it has something to do with reverb and certain knobby magic on the console, but the golden-red aura of his voice is truly exceptional here, and it feels like some kind of hope breaking through.
All the tracks are thoroughly gorgeous, and the EP is available now for just a handful of dollars.
I’ve been falling into Crooked Fingers with a vengeance lately. Despite their Denver connections, I’d never listened to them before The National and St. Vincent teamed up to cover their glorious “Sleep All Summer” for the Merge Records SCORE! compilation several months back.
Since then, a friend put together a few of their tracks I needed to start with, and this was (wonderfully) one of them. The quiet plucking variation here makes me think of rain falling on the trees over our heads as we quietly inhabit the shore.
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
, a benefit album for this wonderfully rich songwriter in his hour of financial need (his wife died, leaving him with small twins to raise).
Name: Heather Browne
