The Cure‘s Robert Smith curated this year’s lineup for the Teenage Cancer Trust Benefit shows in London and, so far, the performances have been stellar. (Acts have included My Bloody Valentine, Mogwai and Chvrches among others.) Continue reading »
August 29th would have been Velvet Underground guitarist Sterling Morrison’s 83rd birthday. And to pay tribute to Morrison, guitarist Thurston Moore released a new cover of the Velvets song “Temptation Inside of Your Heart.” Joining Moore on the track are Deb Googe (My Bloody Valentine), James Sedwards and Jem Doulton. Moore was a member of Sonic Youth from 1981-2011. Continue reading »
As the first single from the genre-defining Loveless, My Bloody Valentine‘s “When You Sleep” might be shoegaze’s representative song or close to it. Combining a hooky melody played on a sampler with dense, distorted guitars and so many different vocal takes that you can barely make out the words some of the time, it seems to embody everything about the genre in a brief little nutshell. Continue reading »
They say nostalgia works in 20-year cycles, and this year the music of 1996 has been in the media a lot. And if you believe the music blogs, it turns out 1996 was a truly groundbreaking year for every possible genre. Over at SPIN: “The 96 Best Alternative Rock Songs Of 1996.” Complex: “Best Rap Songs of 1996.” Junkee: “Ten reasons 1996 was a great year for dance music”. Loudwire: “10 Best Metal Albums of 1996.” Red Bull Music: “1996: Why it was a great year for pop”. Suck it, 1995! (Kidding; similar articles were of course written last year too.)
We’ll be honest: 1996 was not some magical, pioneering year for cover songs. It was also not a terrible year. It was just, you know, another year. There’s no overarching theorem of 1996’s cover songs that wasn’t true in ’95 or ’97. But even so, Cover Me wasn’t around in 1996, so we never made a Best Cover Songs of 1996 list (our first year-end list came in 2009, with the Kings of Convenience’s “It’s My Party” topping it, and you can catch up on all the lists here). So we decided, before the year ends and we take our look at the best covers songs this year, why not take a nostalgic rewind and do 1996 just for fun, twenty years too late. Continue reading »
Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy.
I was fifteen years old when I was first introduced to the world of Infinity Cat Recordings. I was immediately enamored with the punk DIY aesthetic presented by a group of young Nashville punks. When I say “young,” I mean YOUNG. Like only a few years older than me at the time young. Brothers Jake and Jamin Orrall, in their late teens at the time, formed the indie label with the guidance of their father in 2002. A host of psychedelic and grunge-tinged punk bands emerged from the label right from the get-go, leading publications like The Guardian and Billboard Magazine to name it one of the best indie labels in America. JEFF the Brotherhood, a two-piece psychedelic garage-rock band also formed by the Orrall brothers, acted as a sort of nucleus for the label, guiding the overall sound and feel of the rest of the bands that make up the collective.
In a way, the band has always been a source of centering for myself as well. Maybe they aren’t guiding my life choices, but they do have a way of bringing me back to my suburban teenage rebellion years – a time when I was determined to take the world by storm and (pardon my French) fuck shit up, Nashville punk style. JEFF The Brotherhood serves as a reminder to do what I want, and how I want to do it. Every now and then, I will go back to one of their first singles, Noo Sixties, and be reminded of that seemingly contradictory hard-working-punk ethos.
Continue reading »
At the end of this month, Nashville scuzz-rockers JEFF The Brotherhood are releasing their EP Dig The Classics, a carefully curated collection of covers. The real-life brother duo has released three tracks for streaming off the upcoming EP: Pixies‘ “Gouge Away,” My Bloody Valentine‘s “Come In Alone,” and the Wipers‘ “Mystery.” Continue reading »