Lauren O'Connell Archives

Full Albums: Warren Zevon’s ‘Excitable Boy’

Posted by Seuras Og at 10:30 am 5 Responses »

Jan 102025

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

Warren Zevon was quite an excitable boy himself, it seems, if not necessarily in the league of the character described in the song of that name, a highpoint in his third album release. A maverick individual with a bag of demons, he cast a spiky flame across the AOR uplands of the ’70s and ’80s, falling in and out of favor, exasperating and alienating friends, family and fans alike. A couple late career upturns brought him back into focus as the century turned, before lung cancer scythed a swath through his renaissance. It also supplied him the means for some exceptional last gasp, literally, material, releasing The Wind just one month before his 2003 death.

Like many of that era, Zevon’s career began as a songwriter for hire/jingle composer. The Turtles were early recipients of his style. His 1970 debut Wanted Dead or Alive sank with little trace, sending him back to supper clubs and session work. Jackson Browne gave him a huge break, producing and promoting his second disc before taking him out on tour, as his support and gig-buddy. The Browne connection, and the prestigious Asylum label, contrived to bring attention earlier lacking, his quirky songs now available to a much larger audience. This eponymous 1976 album was duly hailed “a masterpiece” by Rolling Stone.

Bolstered by recognition, two years later saw the release of Excitable Boy, again helmed by Browne, together with guitarist Waddy Wachtel. This saw Zevon’s career-best sales, going platinum and attaining a Billboard Top 10 placing. Furthermore, the single from the album, “Werewolves Of London,” #21 on the US chart, prove also an unlikely critical hit in the U.K., at a time when punk rock was more the emergent flavor of the day, alerting this writer to his oeuvre, a love maintained immediately and thereafter.

So let’s see how it and rest of Excitable Boy has lasted, as inspiration and influence for the covers work of others.
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The Best Vampire Weekend Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 9:00 am No Responses »

Jul 262024

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

This spring, Vampire Weekend released their fifth album, Only God Was Above Us. Like all their albums, it was extremely well-received (“Universal acclaim,” says Metacritic), and they’re currently in the middle of a year-long tour supporting it. They take so long between albums that we wanted to strike while the iron was hot and celebrate some of the great covers of their work.

To state the obvious, five albums is not a huge discography. Last month we did The Kinks, and they’ve got 26 studio albums to cover songs from, and that’s not even counting all the non-album singles that include many of their biggest hits. But Vampire Weekend are beloved in a way few modern indie-rock bands are. So even though they don’t have that many songs, and even though they’re hardly in the game of making inescapable pop hits, they get covered a fair amount. And often in unexpected, inventive ways. Fitting for one of the most unexpected, inventive bands in the game.

Read on for our favorites.

The Best Cover and Tribute Albums of 2021

Posted by Staff at 12:00 pm No Responses »

Dec 102021

Follow all our Best of 2021 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.

It feels like a cliché these days to start one of these year-end lists writing about “the times we live in,” but, as you read and listen to our picks, you’ll find the specter of the coronavirus and lockdown pretty unavoidable.

One of these albums is titled Songs from Isolation; another is Awesome Quarantine Mix-Tape. Even on some albums where it’s so blindingly obvious, it’s there. Aoife Plays Nebraska is a recording of a quarantine livestream she gave. Los Lobos envisioned Native Sons as a balm for being stuck at home, unable to tour. And then there’s the tribute to John Prine, the long-awaited sequel to 2010’s Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows, inspired by his death from the coronavirus last year.

But many of these albums recall better times too. Two are belated releases of in-real-life, pre-pandemic tribute concerts, one to Leonard Cohen and the other to Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominoes (well, I guess both of those subject are kind of bummers, in different ways…). Tributes abound to other recent deaths – Andy Gibb, Justin Townes Earle, Roky Erickson – but we have plenty to artists still with us too, like Nick Cave, Peter Gabriel, and a host of underground psych-rock bands you’ve never heard of.

Then there are those that don’t fit any narrative. An artist felt inspired by an unconnected bunch of songs, decided to cover ’em, and brought them all together into a cohesive record. What do Vampire Weekend and The Supremes have in common? Lauren O’Connell’s beatifully intimate imaginings. How about Allen Toussaint and Calexico? Robert Plant and Alison Krauss harmonizing all over ’em. Whether it’s a quote-unquote “lockdown record” or just someone saying, “hell, why not get a bunch of folkie weirdos to play Phish tunes?,” every album on this list brought something meaningful to – ugh – the times we live in.

– Ray Padgett, Editor-in-Chief

The list starts on the next page…

The 50 Best Paul Simon Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 9:00 am 17 Responses »

Oct 132021

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

“I usually come in second to Dylan,” Paul Simon once said, “and I don’t like coming in second.” Indeed, he’s had to deal with it literally ever since he was born, in 1941. We already celebrated Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday in May, and today we turn to the man Dylan has called “one of the preeminent songwriters of the times,” Paul Simon, as he hits his own 80th. Simon’s in the rarified air of someone whose songs get covered almost as much as Dylan’s (ugh – second place again), so for this month’s Best Covers Ever, we’re diving into covers of the entire Paul Simon catalog, both solo and with Simon and Garfunkel.

Another thing Dylan once said about Simon, in relation to his own music, is this: “I’m not Paul Simon. I can’t do that. My songs come out of folk music and early rock n’ roll, and that’s it. I’m not a classical lyricist, I’m not a meticulous lyricist. I don’t write melodies that are clever or catchy.”

False modesty aside, Dylan hits on some of what makes Simon’s work so beloved by other musicians. His melodies are clever and catchy. His lyrics are meticulous. In both words and music, Simon can use a little to say a lot. His songs have strong cores, but leave a lot of space for other artists to play around with. So it’s no surprise that the list below spans genres from punk, dance music, gospel, and more. You’ll hear every sound except one: Silence (sorry). No matter how afield the songs roam, though, they still sound like Paul Simon.

So enough talk about Simon being a perennial silver medal winner. His craft and his talent have earned him and his songs a place at the top of the medal podium, and these fifty covers prove it.

The list begins on Page 2.

Full Albums: Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’

Posted by Jordan Becker at 5:00 pm 2 Responses »

Feb 272015

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

Writing about Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot seems a little like eating at a buffet right before closing. There may be a few good things left, but it is pretty well picked over, and what’s left has lost its flavor. Few rock albums of the past 20 years have been discussed and analyzed as much as YHF. Yet we proceed, undaunted, because what we do is different. And maybe, just maybe, listening to a full set of covers of each song of this great album will allow you to hear it anew. Because you never know when the buffet is going to get restocked with something fresh.
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