Ben Gibbard Joins a Smiths Tribute Band at SF SketchFest

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Jan 282026
 
Ben Gibbard Sings Morrissey

In what seems like the inverse of what has been happening lately, fans of The Smiths and Morrissey fans got to hear some of their songs live on stage. The comedy group The State came together at SF SketchFest to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their film Wet Hot American Summer. Part of that celebration included a performance by Death Cab for Cutie‘s Ben Gibbard with The Smiths tribute band the Sweet and Tender Hooligans. (Also joining with performances of their own were comedians Ana Gasteyer, Tony Hale and Natasha Leggero and musician Jane Wiedlin from the Go-Go’s.) Continue reading »

Review: Chrissie Hynde’s ‘Duets Special’

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Oct 172025
 

Chrissie Hynde has been a rock star for more than fifty years. The Pretenders have not been together quite that long, but Hynde was already making her name as a girl about town and rock-star-in-waiting in London. She has lived the life full-time for all of that period. It is a surprise, then, that she does not fully appreciate the credit that has accrued with that history, and how people still want to hear what she has to say.

Supporting their tenth Album in 2023, The Pretenders initially booked themselves into smaller venues, before it became clear that they had underestimated the love that the world had for her and the band. Eventually the tour went so well that a live album was made and released. Did Hynde not think she was in the class of National Treasures that could call on her friends to make a duets album? The story is that a friend had to remind her that it was an opportunity, if not a duty, to do so. Consider Duets Special an opportunity/duty fulfilled.
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Five Good Covers: “Halo” (Beyoncé)

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Aug 152025
 

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

Beyonce

When “Halo” was released as single, in January of 2009, it became a massive worldwide hit for Beyoncé, but was far from the most successful of the her songs, attaining only, for her, a lowly #5 in the US chart. It was elsewhere that it received grater acclaim, with such disparate statistics as a 13x platinum certification from Australia, making it one of the country’s highest, and the most-played song, 2000 – 2010, on Brazilian radio. Not bad, given only one year within which to beat all the others and olders.

Ryan Tedder and Evan Bogart (with some apparent input from the singer) wrote “Halo” to give a personal flavor to the image of Beyoncé away from the spotlight, minus all the media razzmatazz. Not that there wasn’t some controversy; other performers suggested that the arrangement was recycled from songs written earlier, for Kelly Clarkson and Leona Lewis. All the more intriguing is the suggestion that the song’s premise was based on “Shelter,” a 2004 song by Ray LaMontagne, an artist in about as opposite a field as you could find. (See what you think.)

It has attracted a fair amount of attention in Coverland over the years, and there are north of a hundred versions out there. Many do little than retread the boards, but that is only to be expected. No real outliers, sadly, from the nether fringes of musical tastes: no Tuvan throat singing, no Celtic punk, and nothing remotely Bardcore. Of course there are some stinkers, with some Norwegian black metal from Leo Moracchioli gaining the coveted overall prize for the absolute nadir. So, bypassing those, let’s go for the zeniths.
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The Best Cover and Tribute Albums of 2024

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Dec 192024
 

Follow all our Best of 2024 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.

best cover and tribute albums

A great cover song is hard enough to pull off. Doing it over and over again enough times to make a great cover album is something like a miracle. This year, miracles abounded. We awarded only the third or fourth five-star album in the site’s history. That’s our number one, naturally. But if we’d run a full review of our number two album, it might have gotten five stars too.

Our list includes tributes to everyone from Lou Reed to Low to Tom Petty—twice. It includes jammy experimental covers of ’90s alt-rock, fingerpicked guitar covers of Kraftwerk, and skankin’ ska covers of Weird Al. It translates Leonard Cohen into Hebrew and Talking Heads into Spanish. It honors Fleetwood Mac before Fleetwood Mac and deeper Bob Dylan cuts than you can imagine. (Seriously, imagine the most obscure Bob Dylan song you can. These are more obscure than that.) It was that kind of year.

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Review: Dana Gillespie’s ‘First Love’

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Jun 182024
 

First LoveDana Gillespie… Now, where do I know that name from…

If you cast your mind back (or possibly your father’s), you’ll remember the name, possibly even the album cover, with which Gillespie is arguably best known. That 1974 album, Weren’t Born A Man, which given her Bowie association, immediately had folk wondering whether she were, despite her pneumatic sleeve appearance. Remember, this was around the same time Amanda Lear was allowing the myth around she being born male to permeate, let alone all the claims Bowie fostered around his sexuality. Well, Gillespie wasn’t born a man, and her relationship with Bowie was understandably under wraps: they were teens at its inception, and remained friends and lovers for the next decade. Bowie’s song “Andy Warhol” was written for her, she including it on that album, it produced by Bowie and Mick Ronson. She also sang backing vocals on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. However, this was insufficient to have her then gain much personal chart traction.

In the intervening decades, blues has been Gillespie’s musical vehicle of choice. She’s recorded a huge stash of albums on a plethora of labels, with greater appeal to audiences of mainland Europe. She has also set up a still-running Blues Festival on the exclusive Caribbean island of Mustique, now nearing its 30th birthday. Her latest album First Love is, in part, a deliberate trip back in time, and reflects her own personal tastes, as well as those of her production team, two old friends, Tris Penna, the Abbey Road studios production and A&R man, and Marc Almond, of “Tainted Love” fame. All but one of the songs are covers, the artists as varied as Bob Dylan, Morrissey and Lana Del Rey.
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Review: Rhoda Dakar’s ‘Version Girl’

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May 312023
 

Version Girl by… Rhoda who?

Well, think back to the heady days of 2 Tone Records, Coventry, UK. On the cusp of the 1970s into ’80s, this label hosted the Specials, the Selecter, the (English) Beat, and more. Their revisioning of ska arguably led to the proliferation of ska-punk bands in the US, led off by No Doubt. The 2-Tone movement was as much a political beast as a musical one, preaching a message of integration, with many of the (already multi-racial) bands including children of the 1950s wave of immigration, from the West Indies and into the UK. Racism was more savage then, or perhaps just more nuanced, with the movement alerting the youth of the nation into a better understanding and acceptance.

Anyway, Rhoda Dakar was a member of the Bodysnatchers, an all-female band, who had some brief success before evolving into the Belle Stars, who had a number of hits, including their version of old N’Awlins staple “Iko Iko.” Dakar was not a Belle Star herself, but she moved on to being a guest singer with the Specials, for their second album, touring with them, later becoming a member of the Special AKA, the band they evolved into. Primarily a singer, she has since made a number of solo recordings and popped up in collaborations with a number of acts, notably Madness and the Dub Pistols. Now she has released Version Girl, her first solo album since 2015’s Rhoda Dakar Sings the Bodysnatchers.
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