CSNY Archives - Cover Me

Review: The Wandering Hearts’ “Déjà Vu”

Posted by Seuras Og at 9:30 am 1 Response »

Jun 232025

So, you are a London based acoustic Americana band. What are you going to come up with to stand out from the crowd? If you’re the Wandering Hearts, the answer is Déjà Vu. And if that doesn’t sound familiar, keep reading.

The subtitle of this intriguing release is a lyric from the title track: “We Have All Been Here Before.” To me, that’s either a musing metaphysical or a tad presumptuous. I mean, really–how many of us have actually sat down and decided to make a song by song cover album from one of the premier vocal bands of all time? If they had elected to cover, say, the debut by the original three-piece that may have made better sense, being a more acoustic arrangement, by and large.

But they didn’t. Déjà Vu was, arguably, the release of 1970, as Messrs. Crosby, Stills and Nash bestrode the world, adding the trump card of Neil Young into the brand. Very much of its time, hippy dippy lyricism aplenty, somehow it remains timeless. There are few 50-year-old records that can raise the neck hairs like this one can. Each and every song comes with an instant flashback to the day first heard, whether you were hurling down the highway in an open top car or (like me) headphones on, under the bedcovers. A wonderful record, we gave it the Cover Me badge of honor a year or 5 back, with our own specially compiled covers compilation.

So who the Hearts, Wandering or otherwise? Tara Wilcox, Chess Whiffin and AJ Dean Revington is who. They have been on the UK country circuit long enough to have gained plaudits from most who have encountered them, sharing stages with big hitters like Robert Plant, Tom Petty and more. Indeed, no lesser than Lissie chose them as her support band for her US tour of 2024. This is album number four, the third as a trio, founding member Tim Prottery-Jones having left after their 2018 debut. All three are strong and confident singers, gelling well for the harmonies that are their trademark.

The earlier releases suggest that this record would be a milder confection than it actually is, the trio electing to go for the full-on electric assaults that characterize the release. Which, given the axe-wielding credentials of Young and Stills, might be considered brave or even foolhardy. We’ll get to that, but suffice to say it is their regular band they employ to provide the surprisingly faithful instrumental heft of the full fat rock songs that fill out the recording, along with the additional input of producer Michael Rault. That the set was recorded at Taurus Rising Studios, Joshua Tree, CA, may have something to do with the atmosphere of authenticity, too.
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Full Albums: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s ‘Deja Vu’

Posted by Seuras Og at 2:00 pm 7 Responses »

Jul 242020

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

Crosby, Stills and Nash had already staked their claim as a bona fide supergroup courtesy their first release, cemented by their appearance in the Woodstock documentary. Of course, Neil Young had already joined the band by the time they got there, if mysteriously missing from the film in its initial iteration. His second gig, he appeared for the electric second part of the set. To me he always seemed their secret weapon. Old compadre and sparring partner of Stephen Stills in Buffalo Springfield, there was always the fear he could engineer the gig to being as big a draw in his own right as the trio he joined. Maybe he did; however much I loved the trio, they were always in a different league with Young’s fiery presence on board.

Deja Vu came out in 1970, after being put together in different studios and at different times, with only selections of the four featuring at any one time. All the vocals save “Woodstock” were recorded separately and then spliced together, amid much argument and revision. Young did everything on the half of the album he appears on all by himself, then took away the contributions of the others to mix as he saw fit. Completion took hours, days and weeks.

But it was all worth it. Somehow Deja Vu holds together cohesively, in no small part down to the rhythm section, the excellent Dallas Taylor and Greg Reeves. Certified gold within a fortnight, partly on the back of $2 million presales, it spent nearly two years in the Billboard chart, despite largely grudging and lackluster reviews. It still seems the pinnacle of their collective career, the only real instance wherein the deceitful artifice of any group collective manages fully to convince, melding individual directions with a combined corporacy.

Like most of our Full Cover posts, we have near-endless options for some songs and had to go scrounging for others – no trouble finding covers of “Teach Your Children,” but how many versions of “Everybody I Love You” have you heard? See what you think of the ten songs we pulled together here…
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In The Spotlight: The Isley Brothers

Posted by Hope Silverman at 1:30 pm 1 Response »

Jun 192020

In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!

While The Isley Brothers are commonly filed under Soul or R&B, that categorization only partially reflects what they have delivered soundwise since the release of their first album way back in 1959. We all know how this works: basically, whatever genre your biggest hits fall into will then by default define who you are to the world forevermore. And because their most popular songs are of the soul shouter-disco/funk-quiet storm variety, they have been conveniently stuffed into the singular genre of Soul/R&B. But in the case of the Isleys, this cut-and-dried categorization is exceptionally misleading. Which is to say, while their ’60s hits “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You) and “Shout Pts. & 2” remain their highest ranking tracks in terms of Spotify plays, they are hardly reflective of the true, signature Isley sound, a perfect melding of topical Rock & Soul that remains unmatched to this day. Make no mistake (and with all due respect to their former Motown label mates, The Temptations and The Four Tops), The Isley Brothers were a proper band. Like The Beatles or The Stones. A classic old school, turn the amp up to 11, self-contained, smokin’, genre-defying band.

This is just a roundabout way of saying if you want to know what the Isleys are really about sonically and philosophically, it’s best to avoid the greatest hits playlists and head straight for the string of positively seminal studio albums the band released from 1971-1976. There were 6 in total over that time, beginning with Givin’ It Back and running on through to 1976’s Harvest For The World. It is there you will meet O’Kelly, Rudolph, Ronald, Ernie, Marvin and Chris Jasper, the real Isley Brothers.
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Quarantine Covers 7: Sheryl Crow, She & Him, Kurt Vile, St. Vincent, and More

Posted by Ray Padgett at 10:31 am No Responses »

May 192020

Amy Helm – Twilight (The Band cover)

The Best Joni Mitchell Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 12:00 pm 16 Responses »

May 032019

‘The Best Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

Joni Mitchell is 75 and won’t be with us forever. She suffered an aneurysm in 2015, and she’s coping with the little-understood Morgellons disease. She has difficulty walking, and has not spoken publicly in years. But if her place on earth is tenuous, her place in the heavens is secure; millions of people already look up to her every day.

Joni Mitchell’s songs are famous for being intensely personal, a deep expression of her self that people nevertheless relate to. Those who aspire to her voice become near-slavish devotees. There’s a great New Yorker piece about a small show of Joni’s that a drunken Chrissie Hynde gets overly caught up in (“That’s a REAL singer up there!”), and Hynde’s not alone. Mitchell isn’t just a real singer, though. She’s a real songwriter, a real painter, a real guitarist, a real follower of her muse – a real artist, one of the realest of the past hundred years. That authenticity is what continues to bring people into her circle on a daily basis.

In an excellent essay for NPR, Ann Powers wrote: “Like her prime compatriots Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and her favorite protégé Prince, no one can adequately echo her; even great singers, taking on her songbook, admit they can only hope to achieve proximity.” Indeed, a Joni Mitchell cover is never just a tribute – it’s an assertion, an artist coming forth to pick up a gauntlet she lay down decades ago.

We found 30 covers that show the artists doing an especially good job at matching their talents to Joni’s, creating new works of art that, no matter how novel or innovative they may be, never set out to eradicate the original artist’s signature. May her art continue to open eyes, whether through her own performances or those of others, for centuries to come.

–Patrick Robbins, Feature Editor

The Best Neil Young Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 2:00 pm 29 Responses »

Jan 312019

‘The Best Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

Neil Young released his self-titled debut solo album on January 22, 1969. Well, technically he re-released it that day. It had initially landed without much fanfare the previous November, only for Young to quickly pull it from shelves due to what he deemed a subpar mix. Even in his professional infancy, decades before Pono and the Neil Young Archives, he was a stickler for quality control.

We hope this list would pass muster with him. At 50 songs, it’s our longest to date (tied only with The Rolling Stones) and still barely scratches the surface. We could have quite easily listed the best 50 covers of “Heart of Gold” or “Like a Hurricane” alone. He gets covered about as much as any songwriter alive, and about as well too.

Neil hasn’t slowed down in his own age, and neither has the flow of new covers. Some of the covers below came out near 50 years ago themselves. Others only landed in the last year or two. No doubt another contender will arrive tomorrow. Neil never stops, and, thankfully, neither do covers of his songs. Continue reading »