Earlier this month, a beardless Robin Pecknold covered Fred Neil‘s “The Dolphins” during the Fleet Foxes frontman’s solo set opening for Joanna Newsom’s “special guest” at Seattle’s sold-out Paramount Theatre. Pecknold ended his short performance with a stripped-down interpretation of one of the best songs by the cult ’60s Greenwich folk-rocker. Continue reading »
Bob Dylan has many talents. Singing is not one of them. I’m not talking about his ability to convey emotion and make you feel the feels through the melodic pronunciation of words, because he does that better than anyone else. I’m talking about how Dylan’s voice literally sounds like a crying llama massaging a cactus with sandpaper. It’s not very good.
But last year, rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest troll released Shadows in the Night, and his voice sounded as smooth and clear as his better-than-expected Frank Sinatra covers. It helped that he had one of his tightest bands backing him up and setting him up in a moonlight atmosphere that would have made Ol’ Blue Eyes proud, even if he didn’t like Dylan’s music. Continue reading »
So that’s how you spell “Jai Guru Deva, Om.”
That’s Candace Leca singing this classic Beatles cut with the lyrics written on 100 different balloons. The video was created by Leca and her husband, Mike Paglia, who plays guitar and piano on this cover of a song they both love and have always wanted to cover.
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My Morning Jacket frontman and angel of a singer Jim James has teamed up with Pakistan’s Sachal Ensemble to rework Stevie Wonder‘s “Love in Need of Love Today” into a joyous Eastern hymn. For a man who knows how to yell, James shows restraint in his spot-on Wonder impression, but his voice doesn’t lose any of the song’s emotion. It helps to have Sachal Ensemble at your side, an ensemble that’s famous for their classical reinterpretation of Western music (their Dave Brubeck cover is the best example). Continue reading »
Robert Plant‘s post Led Zeppelin years have been quiet yet fruitful, with a long solo career that includes Grammy wins with Alison Krauss and reviving his folk project, Band of Joy, to critical acclaim. The latest Plant release is a cover of Elbow‘s “The Blanket Of Night” for The Long Road, a British Red Cross benefit album aimed to raise awareness of Europe’s refugee crisis. Continue reading »
New York City nostalgia sucks. The new HBO show Vinyl sucks, that friend of yours who keeps telling you New York was better in the ’70s sucks, and every Brooklyn band attempting to make NYC sound “great” again sucks. Everything sucks. Except the Strokes, the only band able to turn NYC nostalgia into genuine modern rock ‘n’ roll, in this case by covering the Velvet Underground. How did the Strokes do it? Simple, they stole as much from Television as they did the from Velvets, which explains the more melodic guitar leads and actual use of bass (just kidding, I love you John Cale and Doug Yule). It helped too that Julian Casablancas was an actual New Yorker who could sing Lou Reed’s words seriously and not seem silly. Continue reading »