Jul 072023
 

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!
Nick Drake Bryter Later
There is a definite feel that the songwriting talents of Nick Drake, so overlooked and undervalued in his all-too-brief lifetime, are again coming back around into view. Suddenly a host of newer and younger artists are covering his work, like Josienne Clark and Valerie June. Plus, there is today’s release of a new tribute album, The Endless Coloured Ways, featuring artists as varied as Fontaines D.C. and Let’s Eat Grandma. So, having featured full-album posts with his first, Five Leaves Left, and last, Pink Moon, surely the time has come for us to complete his triad of albums in this series.

Bryter Layter has always seemed the most substantial of Drake’s holy trinity, perhaps down to the lush orchestrations of Robert Kirby and the stellar rhythm section of the Fairport duo, Daves Pegg and Mattacks. The latter pair were also the de facto core of the Island records house band of that time, the Oxfordshire Sly and Robbie, appearing on records by artists as diverse as John Martyn and Murray Head. True, Kirby also adorned Five Leaves Later, but with Danny Thompson’s (no less splendid) acoustic bass that time around, it was all a little more pastoral, with the difference rendering this disc with that little bit more drive and grit. Which, admittedly, are words people don’t tend to use too frequently around the maudlin and whimsical canon of Nick Drake.

Bryter Layter first came out in 1971, produced, as always, by Joe Boyd, a man who has continued to keep the flame of Drake alive, even ahead of latter recognition and accolade. But, like Five Leaves Left before, it sank like a stone, even if critics were beginning to find decent things to say. How sad that it took Nick Drake’s death, and the repercussions of that on his peers and acolytes, to get his name up in lights so many decades on. There have been other tribute albums in his memory: 1992’s Brittle Days, for instance, and 2013’s Way To Blue, the latter curated by Boyd, and I dare say there will be more. But today, in honor of the newest one, let’s make up one of our own.
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Nov 012019
 

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

nirvana mtv unplugged covers

Nirvana has sold more than 75 million records, joining the ranks of Aretha Franklin, The Police, Journey, and Tupac Shakur among others, despite having their career tragically cut short by the death of Kurt Cobain after they’d released only three albums. The band is credited with increasing grunge music’s recognition beyond the Pacific Northwest, introducing the genre to the masses.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Nirvana’s live album, MTV Unplugged in New York. The performance was recorded on November 18, 1993,  aired on MTV on December 16, 1993, and released as an album almost a year later, the first Nirvana release since Kurt Cobain’s death in April. The performance was filmed in one take and differed from the style of many of the previous MTV Unplugged sessions. The band chose to build their Unplugged setlist using mostly lesser known songs, including six covers out of fourteen songs, passing over their biggest hit, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

This album has a variety of accolades, including a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album, a number one debut on the Billboard 200, a 5x platinum certification, and the top spot on New Musical Express‘s 50 Greatest Live Albums list.

To celebrate the historic day, we’ve compiled covers spanning a variety of artists who reimagine each track.

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Aug 312018
 

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

Cat Stevens

It feels a little strange saying “spoiler alert” about a movie that’s closing in on fifty years old and is a huge cult favorite besides, but if you’ve seen Harold and Maude, you know the importance the Cat Stevens song “Trouble” has in the movie. The sequence is unforgettable, and one viewing will forever tie the song to that series of images.

Of course, the song didn’t need Harold and Maude to stand out – it was a key track on Mona Bone Jakon, the album that reintroduced Stevens to the listening public as an introspective singer-songwriter over a year and a half before the movie’s release. No longer a chamber-popster, Stevens looked long and hard at himself and humbly reported what he’d found to listeners who could relate. They still do.
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May 132014
 

With the possible exception of Martin Scorsese, no movie director has been more closely identified with his soundtracks than Wes Anderson. He has consistently selected songs by well-known artists that, through no fault of their own, have become three-quarters forgotten over the years, and reintroduced them to the world as the classics they had always been. If someone calls a song a prime candidate for the next Wes Anderson soundtrack (Guilty!), an instant and accurate picture is created. The soundtracks show a cohesion that’s rare in these days of we-want-a-hit soundtracks, where the earmarked smash doesn’t play until the final credits have started rolling, and they have become high points in the experience of watching Anderson’s movies. Now the American Laundromat Records label has collected covers of some of those high points on I Saved Latin! A Tribute to Wes Anderson, resulting in the best tribute album of the year.
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