Download This scours the web’s dark corners for cool cover freebies. View past installments.
We’ve reviewed and recommended cover albums galore here at Cover Me, from seemingly random collections to artist-specific tributes. The risk of redundancy grows as a collection’s focus becomes narrower, but in the right hands, a clear focus can work wonders. Check out our reviews of Dave Depper’s Ram Project and Thea Gilmore’s John Wesley Harding for a view of each side of the coin. Continue reading »
Download This scours the web’s dark corners for cool cover freebies. View past installments.
Billy Joel spent much of the ’80s looking to court music lovers with albums that sounded either retro (An Innocent Man) or ultra-pop (The Bridge, which features a collaboration with Cyndi Lauper). For one glorious record, though, Joel broke from his “piano man” mold. He got angry. He got punk. Continue reading »
Download This scours the web’s dark corners for cool cover freebies. View past installments.
Oftentimes, when artists release free covers, you’re met with a few different possibilities. One is that there’s great variety between the song selections, but there are only a few of them. The other is that there are a ton of different covers and they’re all sort of the same. Vancouver’s Reid Jamieson cannot quite be placed in either camp, although his covers are in no short supply. Continue reading »
Download This! scours the web’s dark corners for cool cover freebies. View past installments.
There’s not much to say about Radiohead’s OK Computer that hasn’t been said since it was released 14 years ago. Here at Cover Me we seem to post Radiohead cover songs almost daily. Well, the sincerest form of flattery is covering a song by an influential artist or album, right? And love it or hate it, it’s difficult to dispute the impression that OK Computer left on music. So it’s no surprise that Stereogum rounded up 12 great artists a few years ago to do a song-for-song tribute to OK Computer. Since the tribute came 10 years after the original, they titled it OKX. Continue reading »
Hard to believe, but Freddie Mercury died 20 years ago this upcoming November. The flamboyant frontman of Queen always seemed so full of life, bigger than life really, until he succumbed to AIDS at the young age of 45. Now, all these years later, an artist who took her name from one of his band’s songs (Lady Gaga) tops the charts with songs that could easily fit in on many a Queen album. Continue reading »
Download This scours the web’s dark corners for cool cover freebies. View past installments.
Originally a solo project of frontman Chris Chu, The Morning Benders quickly evolved into a full-fledged quartet. They relocated from Berkeley to Brooklyn a couple of years ago and, with the assistance of Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, recorded their critically acclaimed second album, Big Echo. Even the notoriously fickle folks over at Pitchfork loved the bright, atmospheric pop of the album, adding it to their “Best New Music” list.
Never ones to hide their influences, the band recorded a collection of covers shortly before their departure from the West Coast and posted it as a free download on their blog. The Bedroom Covers features, suitably, a collection of lo-fi, low-key acoustic versions of a cross-section of pop tunes. The song selection won’t surprise you, but there’s something refreshing about seeing a young band that has an appreciation for musical history. Continue reading »