You can’t get a more direct than Covers, Kathleen Edwards’ newest short LP/long EP. It lets you know exactly what you got, even before you press play. That is commendable, but then Edwards has never been much for one to conceal her thoughts or her situation. This Canadian singer supreme has had a rocky old trail over the past decade or two, since electing to step away from critical acclaim in 2014, after four well-received albums of polished country and roots-derived songmanship.
The Ottawa coffee shop Edwards subsequently opened and ran was called “Quitters.” That might have been a self-deprecating jibe in name, but it was only later she revealed her then battle with depression had led to her tactical withdrawal from the music business. She returned to music in 2020, we all know what then came along to wreak worldwide havoc. This is her second release since her return, and her first since COVID lockdown and her eventual sale of Quitters.
The eight songs on Covers are a good mix of the likely and the unexpected, broadly drawn from Edwards’ fellow ranks of singer-songwriters. Springsteen, Petty and Pride are among the former, but songs from The Flaming Lips and Supertramp get a turn also. With backing of electric guitars, keyboards, occasional strings and a rhythm section, Edwards sings and plays acoustic. Greg Leisz and Scott Thurston are two of the accompaniments dropping by, on guitars and bass, respectively, each a sign of her esteem amongst peers.
Tom Petty’s “Crawling Back to You” is the opener. This minor key melancholic is one of Petty’s most emotive songs. If anything, Edwards strips it back still further, her voice a plangent imprint, over a casual strum, tinkling piano and some of Lois’s trademark desolation steel. If Petty’s delivery gave you a lump in the throat, Edwards fully buckles your knees.
The following song might catch you out, naggingly familiar, a languid cri de coeur. However, as Jason Isbell slots in on the backing vocal, it suddenly identifies itself as “Traveling Alone,” a centerpiece Isbell wrote on his solo breakthrough Southeastern. The original had his then-wife on fiddle and backing vocals, but the backing here, shorn of that, allows greater attention to the vocals, with the reversal of vocal complements working a treat. Brian Whelan adds both the scaffold of skeletal piano chords and the warm hum of organ; Peter Von Althen makes his first appearance, on drums.
Potentially the best known song, at least apropos in overland, is Bruce Springsteen’s “Human Touch.” Starting with just voice and guitar, it becomes a fragile ornament of spare beauty. Piano is nearly all else, until the voice of Afie Jurvanen chimes in, a peppery contrast to Edwards’ smoother vessel. Jurvanen, who also provides most of the non-Leisz electric guitar parts elsewhere, prevents this slim version from becoming too slim. Performing elsewhere in his own right as Bahamas, he is one of a welter of Canadian artists who seem to miss the radar in the land duly beneath their own.
Some folks love the ungainly quirks Wayne Coyne liberally sprinkles all over his work with The Flaming Lips; some don’t. Bereft of all his mannerisms, “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” is revealed as a wry and appealing Midwestern moan, garnished with maudlin steel and synths. Similarly, Supertramp’s “The Logical Song” becomes almost unannoying. Reminiscent in style of Gary Jules and his cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World,” it begins well. But the middle eight, which then draws in extra drums and drama, risks losing that advantage, from which it never quite recovers.
Flip the disc (as this is vinyl, at least in mind), and it is the sweet slacker ramshackle of Paul Westerberg that is up for a new lick of paint. His “Only Lie Worth Telling” becomes completely different, delicately picked, with her soothing croon far less self-aware than the erstwhile Replacement. The arrangement is likewise more ornate, with twin steel and treated guitars. It is rather fine, a high point in fact. Daniel Tashian adds subdued BVs.
Vying with “Human Touch” for the best known song here, “Hello In There” is a hard song to cover, by virtue of the power of John Prine’s original, over which his character spills throughout. Whining steel and some second female harmonies, from Lauren Morrow, are nearly enough to wrest away the legacy of the author, emphasis on “nearly.” It is a very good cover, but in the end, not quite sufficient to make us forget the source.
To end this short but succinctly solid set is one of the lesser stars in the R.E.M. canon. Perhaps overlooked in the compendium of greatness that was Automatic for the People, “Sweetness Follows” always seemed to labor a little too hard to find its hook. Edwards searches high and low, and actually finds in it a little more melody, but even her voice can’t carry the pathos that Stipe provided to the not-really-a-chorus, however well prompted she is by Whelan’s organ.
With that worthy more than worthwhile conclusion, the Covers project leaves itself a little flat, which is a shame, as nearly all the rest of the songs are superb renditions. Or is it that, compared to those, this closer merely gives that impression? I suspect, stand alone, and in a field of other REMitators, it might stand out more distinctively. Nonetheless, Covers as a whole remains a decent document and a reminder of Kathleen Edwards’ individual capability with a song.
Covers tracklisting:
- Crawling Back To You (Tom Petty cover)
- Traveling Alone (Jason Isbell cover)
- Human Touch (Bruce Springsteen cover)
- Feeling Yourself Disintegrate (The Flaming Lips cover)
- The Logical Song (Supertramp cover)
- Only Lie Worth Telling (Paul Westerberg cover)
- Hello In There (John Prine cover)
- Sweetness Follows (R.E.M. cover)
