Jan 312017
 
Dylan-Sinatra003

In October of 2015, when Bob Dylan started performing Frank Sinatra covers that weren’t on his first standards album Shadows in the Night live, we wrote Shadows Volume 2 may be closer than you think.” Sure enough, a few months later, that “Volume 2” appeared, titled Fallen Angels.

Then this past June, we noticed that another American songbook standard had entered his setlists, prompting us to write a post titled Is Bob Dylan Planning a Third Album of Frank Sinatra Covers?. And today we got our answer: Yes. It’s called Triplicate and it’s three discs long.

We cheered that first album Shadows in the Night as loudly as anyone – we even named it the best covers album of the year. Last year, though, Fallen Angels didn’t even make our year-end list. Those songs reportedly came from the same sessions as the Shadows tracks, and it sounded like it. Songs that weren’t good enough to go on Shadows ended up on Fallen Angels. One standards album, as it turned out, was enough. Continue reading »

Jan 302017
 
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Radiohead is one of those bands whose music is pretty tricky to cover right – it takes guts to tackle any of the legendary English band’s tracks. But Chicago-based electronic producer Shallou aka J Boston is unfazed. His new cover of Radiohead‘s “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” recreates the somber tune with a chill and relaxing tone reflecting his equally laid-back repertoire.

By molding Kid A‘s (2000) dreamy closing track to his liking, he leaves behind the track’s gloomy origins in favor of a more laid-back version ripe with classic feel-good indie vibes. He said this about the cover: Continue reading »

Jan 272017
 

Under the Radar shines a light on lesser-known cover artists. If you’re not listening to these folks, you should. Catch up on past installments here.

Tom_Rosenthal

London’s Tom Rosenthal writes songs with titles like “Toby Carr’s Difficult Relationship With Tuna” and “Watching You Watching YouTube in the Dark.” His piano playing is less playing than painting, capturing various shades and hues with his arrangements. Here at Cover Me, we’re glad to do our part in turning his designation as “Britain’s Best Unknown Songwriter” into a thing of the past. We just choose to do it by featuring his work on other people’s songwriting.
Continue reading »

Jan 252017
 
leonard cohen tribute

Last night, Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg held an epic Leonard Cohen tribute show, bringing together Cohen’s peers and younger admirers for a 22-song blowout of tribute covers. From a killer instrumental opener of “Hallelujah” by Delicate Steve – a smart move, getting that out of the way up front with a left-field guitar version that doesn’t attempt to compete with Jeff Buckley – the sold-out crowd sang along to Cohen many profound lyrics, and a few of his profound ones too (Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group led a rousing holler through Cohen’s dumbest song, “Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-On”).

Many of performers had personal Cohen stories to share. “I met Leonard Cohen at a BBC session in 1967 – but I can’t remember anything about it,” Richard Thompson quipped, while Josh Ritter told a yarn about chasing Cohen down an alley backstage only to run headfirst into a truck and miss his once chance. Richard’s son Teddy Thompson recalled Cohen once asking him what he was working on. When he replied that he was making a country album, Cohen said cryptically, “I went country myself, once…” Thompson then covered one of Cohen’s most country songs, “Ballad of the Absent Mare.” Continue reading »

Jan 252017
 
protest cover songs

Well, it has been quite a week in politics. President Trump got sworn in Friday, then on Saturday hundreds of thousands of protesters marched across the country. We don’t need to go into the many (many) controversies and debates the first few days of the Trump administration have already brought us. You know them, and that’s not really our beat anyway.

What is our beat is cover songs, and a whole lot of politically-minded covers came out in the past week. Some are explicitly covers of songs with political lyrics, like Neko Case, kd lang, and Laura Veirs covering Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power” and OK Go covering Morrissey’s “Interesting Drug” (opening lines: “There are some bad people on the rise / They’re saving their own skins by ruining other people’s lives”).

Other covers are only political in the sense that they were released to raise money for groups like the American Civil Liberties Union or Planned Parenthood. Barsuk Records put out a covers comp featuring Nada Surf, David Bazan, Mates of State, The Long Winters (wonderfully titled Sad!). Members of the Philadelphia punk scene came together for a 35-song set of covers by the likes of Laura Stevenson and Jeff Rosenstock, which range from the covers of political artists like Against Me! and Bikini Kill to a cover of the Beatles’ “I’m Only Sleeping,” which would be difficult to find a political take on. Continue reading »

Jan 242017
 
KristinaEsfandiari

The final track from Nirvana’s breakthrough classic Nevermind doesn’t get as much cover love as the rest of outstanding tracks on that album. “Something in the Way” is almost a fragment of a song; you have to strain your ears to interpret Kurt Cobain’s whispered lyrics (second verse, same as the first) and in the end you are left with only a piece of a haunted tale. The refrain feels loud in comparison, but the most prominent contributor there is a cello. It’s a beautiful and chilling song, but tough to make it your own with so little content, already done so well. Continue reading »