10. Shane Parish — Repertoire
Don’t let the painting on the cover deceive you. These acoustic guitar instrumentals may sound like Medieval or Renaissance music at times, but the sources are anything but. If you didn’t look at the tracklist, a familiar melody might grab your year. Wait, is that…Kraftwerk? The Minutemen? Aphex Twin? Yes to all, as well as a host of avant-garde jazz players from Ornette Coleman to Rahsaan Roland Kirk. The latter also reminds me of Vashti Bunyan’s “17 Pink Sugar Elephants,” and those sorts of connections abound when you let yourself get lost in this mesmerizing album. – Ray Padgett
9. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Nathan Salsburg, Tyler Trotter — Hear The Children Sing The Evidence
No one does an out-there covers project like Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Last we heard from him, he recorded a bunch of Merle Haggard tunes as old-weird-Americana. Now he’s turned his attention to ‘90s post-hardcore Dischord Records band Lungfish. But, as usual, there’s nothing straightforward about this. He and his collaborators only cover two of Lungfish’s songs here. So what makes this an album and not a single or EP? Each song gets stretched to around 20 minutes (the originals are around five). The Louisville outsider-music trio of Will Oldham, Nathan Salsburg, and Tyler Trotter stretch and warp these two songs in all sorts of ways. You don’t need to know the originals to dig the vibe. – Ray Padgett
8. Various Artists — Your Voice Is Not Enough: A Tribute to Low
You could make the argument that there are better slowcore bands than Low, but nobody can deny that they are the genre’s defining band. For twenty years they released top-notch songs, bummed out and beautiful for it. The Fensler, the record label that specializes in the dark and experimental, was in the process of putting together a tribute album to Low when drummer Mimi Parker died of ovarian cancer at the age of 55. Your Voice Is Not Enough was dedicated to her memory, and it’s hard to think of a better sendoff. There are no chart-toppers here, no rowdy pub singalongs or campfire classics – no, just eight bands performing songs from seven Low albums that could serve as soundtracks to slow-motion high-definition footage of avalanches. They creep out with power and delicacy, ready to surround and knock you off your feet; whether you’re buried or you ride the surface is up to you. – Patrick Robbins
7. Various Artists — The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed
Light In The Attic have pulled no punches in this extravagant release, likewise taking no prisoners in the all-star cast present. Some fairly obvious contenders are here, along with a fair few surprises and more, seldom missing any opportunity to expand into near cliche. Pulled together by Bill Bentley, a music industry bigwig with a track record in this sort of thing, and a longterm associate of Reed, the aim was to look at all periods of his songwriting. (Bentley was also behind similarly high profile tributes to Roky Erickson, Skip Spence and Doug Sahm.) For both Reed aficionados and the Reed-averse, this is as good an entry, or primer, into the undoubted enigma he was, and the varied stages he trod. – Seuras Og [read full review]
6. The Raveonettes — The Raveonettes Sing…
The Raveonettes have been honing and refining their post-shoegaze noise pop sound for two decades. Their first album in seven years, it’s a tribute album to their favourite music of the 1960s (with a couple of songs from the ’50s and one from the ’70s). Their aesthetic has always combined a love for ’60s pop with prominent noise heavily influenced by post-punk and shoegaze, the latter a genre that also is inspired by earlier pop. Some of the tracks are very obvious picks, such as the Lee Hazlewood track “The Girl on Death Row,” or the Velvet Underground song “Venus in Furs,” or a song popularized by The Cramps, “Goo Goo Muck.” But then there’s the Gram Parsons cover, which should stand out like a sore thumb. (Apparently the expanded version will feature a Who cover and, wildest of all, a cover of “The End” by The Doors.) And there are a few deep cuts as well. The Raveonettes mold both the obvious songs and the not-so-obvious songs into their sound, so that each track sounds exactly like them regardless of what genre it was originally. It’s an impressive display of a band consistently making songs their own. – Riley Haas
5. Various Artists — Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney
Tribute to who, I hope you aren’t asking, but, in case you are: Olney was a much loved musician and songwriter, releasing a score of albums over his lifetime. Possibly better known through his songs, his peers queued up to play his material in life, much as they do here, following his on the road, onstage death, at 71, five years ago. This 17-track selection includes the likes of Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Mary Gauthier and even Janis Ian, in a roster so powerful, they don’t even provide necessarily the best tracks. Songs you’ll know include “Deeper Well,” with Lu gives a typically meat and potatoes drawled delivery and a superbly gruff Buddy Miller, who tackles the haunting prophecy of “Jerusalem Tomorrow,” largely best known from the version by Miller’s onetime boss, Emmylou Harris. Ones you might not know include “Women Across the River,” which gets a rare outing from Willis Alan Ramsey, little heard since his 1972 debut, his faltering tenor gifting the song with a dusty back porch vibe.
Other veterans here include Greg Brown and Jim Lauderdale, but two of the most moving performances come from beyond the grave, with Olney himself, for the unreleased “Sonnet #40″ and from his old road buddy, Townes Van Zandt, with a similarly unreleased live take on “Illegal Cargo,” which closes the set. But the most striking rendition of all comes from the poet and singer R.B. Morris, his solemn and spare version of “Always the Stranger” undercut beautifully with the low keen of uilleann pipes. – Seuras Og
4. Various Artists — Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration Of Tom Petty
Tom Petty was always open in his love and respect for country music. Debt, even, with many of his songs a mere pedal steel away from sounding that way. So the new tribute album Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty is not remotely any leap into uncharted territory. Made with the full cooperation of the Petty estate, and, particularly, the oversight of his daughter, Adria, Petty Country unsurprisingly contains a Heartbreaker or two to beef up the instrumental chops. The songs contained herein also take a good walk through the catalog, unafraid of both picking the obvious candidates and digging deeper.
All but one or two acts deliver the goods. Whether it fulfills a strictly country format probably matters little; the attraction here is more to fans of Petty and of “Southern” rock than to any hardcore country allegiances, although the presence of Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and even George Strait may guarantee some interested crossover sampling. – Seuras Og [read full review]
3. Andrew Bird & Madison Cunningham — Cunningham Bird
You can make the case that Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks’ pre-Fleetwood Mac album Buckingham Nicks provided a lodestone for the whole next few decades, and not just for those two. So why is it not a worldwide household item? Astonishingly, there has never been any official release of Buckingham Nicks on CD. A relative failure in its original vinyl iteration, only under-the-counter bootlegs, often incorporating additional outtakes, have ever been released in the format. Buckingham himself has asked for this repeatedly, but no go, for reasons uncertain.
This is where Andrew Bird and Madison Cunningham come in, covering the entire album. Bird is quite the polymath, with a career dodging any identifying label, as he encompasses folk, jazz, classical and bluegrass, with 16 solo releases since 1996. Cunningham is a West Coast folkie, by and large, with multiple albums and EPs under her belt. She has worked intermittently with Bird since 2017.
Unusually for a covers project, Cunningham Bird stands up in isolation, not really needing any great knowledge of what came before. But that’s not to say today’s artists didn’t enjoy getting to know the work of yesteryear. Bird says, “I mean, this is part of their story, and they should be proud of it. It’s a super ambitious, great record.” May the same be said for Cunningham Bird one day. – Seuras Og [read full review]
2. Various Artists — My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall
The excellent new album My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall pays tribute to songs written by the author Alice Randall, the first African-American woman to write a number-one country hit (“XXX’s and OOO’s,” for Trisha Yearwood). Randall said of this set, “I had songs recorded in the ’80s, in the ’90s, in the 2000s, and 2010s, but I never once had the joy of hearing one of the songs that I wrote from the perspective of a Black woman recorded by a Black woman. With this project…I hope to change that.” Change it she does. – Ray Padgett
1. Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles From Abbey Road
In 2020 Lucinda Williams suffered a stroke, during a worldwide pandemic. She had to relearn how to sing, but never regained her guitar skills, and she got to reappraise the music that she loved and formed her. She released six volumes of Lu’s Jukebox, cover albums of her favorite artists or genres. Once she had recovered enough to tour and perform, she got a more welcome opportunity to rethink her relationship to The Beatles, with an opportunity to record at Abbey Road studios. The result is Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles from Abbey Road, forming volume 7 of Lu’s Jukebox, and it is a triumph.
A strong woman who had to overcome huge personal hardship to make her way in the music industry, on her own terms, may not have felt the need to record “With a Little Help From My Friends” or “Don’t Let Me Down,” but those sentiments are a key part of her new, successful life. You can hear the emotion of the need, and the gratitude where it was necessary. It is not a downbeat album, or mawkish, but you cannot escape the sentiment.
Earlier this year we had much fun selecting our 75 Best Beatles covers, full in the knowledge that we could have chosen a thousand and still found good material, and that new entries would be made all the time. There are a couple here that will make the list the next time we embark on that joyful task. – Mike Tobyn [read full review]
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