Aug 142020
 

tanya donellyjenn champion the blue albumTanya Donelly has a long history, as both singer-songwriter of Belly and solo artist, of interweaving emotionally charged originals with covers similarly forged from despair, heartbreak, and loneliness. The results have frequently been sublime, as when she complemented “Gepetto” with a heartfelt version of Gram Parsons’ “Hot Burrito #1” on the Gepetto EP of 1992, or when she accompanied “New England” and “Days of Grace” with an equally fervent rendition of the Beatles’ “Long, Long, Long” on 2006’s This Hungry Life. The covers have usually taken the backseat as B-sides and deep cuts, or as contributions to tribute albums to the likes of The Smiths or Elliott Smith. Yet now, in this topsy-turvy year of 2020, they are the main event; Donelly has not only released a series of quarantine covers for charity (featuring Labi Siffre’s “Bless the Telephone,” and the Pixies’ “Here Comes Your Man”), but has also polished off a covers album in collaboration with the Parkington Sisters, Tanya Donelly and the Parkington Sisters.

It’s Donelly’s first all-covers album, therefore, that stands before us, but it’s clearly no ordinary covers album. The Belly, Breeders, and Throwing Muses star initiated it out of a desire to do something different with the format in the wake of Juliana Hatfield’s recent successes with Sings Olivia Newton-John (2018), and Sings The Police (2019). She might well have followed in the steps of her sometime collaborator and fellow doyen of New England alt-rock by making, effectively, a tribute album to one of her musical heroes: Kate Bush, say, or Echo and the Bunnymen. But instead, Donelly has attempted to bring a sense of unity to nine reinterpretations of songs that have been hugely meaningful to her, by way of the moody string arrangements and somber vocal harmonies that the classically trained, Massachusetts-based Parkington Sisters are known for.
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May 292020
 

Check out the best covers of past months here.

best cover songs may 2020
Daniel Romano’s Outfit – Sweetheart Like You (Bob Dylan cover)


This one’s for all the Dylan superfans. In 1984, Bob Dylan played three songs on Letterman with L.A. punk band The Plugz. They were gritty and garagey and raw. It boded well for his new sound. And then he never played with them again. The album he was ostensibly promoting, Infidels, was much smoother, helmed by Mark Knopfler. For those who still wonder what could have been, Daniel Romano covered the entire album as if he’d recorded it with The Plugz. Continue reading »

Nov 152013
 

When Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs recorded their first Under the Covers collaboration, they were surprised that it was released with the subtitle “Vol. 1.” Whatever genius at the Shout! Factory label chose to do that deserves a raise and a promotion, as it led Sweet and Hoffs to record two more volumes. Where Volume 1 consisted of songs based in the ’60s, and Volume 2 was made up of ’70s songs, Volume 3, released this week, is all about the ’80s, the decade when Hoffs came of age as a musician and Sweet wasn’t far behind.
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May 282013
 

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

Jane Wiedlin co-wrote “Our Lips Are Sealed” and brought it to her band, the Go-Go’s; their version was sunny and buoyant, a nascent form of girl power that served as their first single and heralded their classic debut album, Beauty and the Beat. Terry Hall co-wrote “Our Lips Are Sealed” and brought it to his band, the Fun Boy Three; their version was moody and dark, a top-ten dose of paranoia that served as their next to last single and heralded the end of their too-short career.
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Sep 212011
 

Every Wednesday, our resident Gleek Eric Garneau gives his take on last night’s Glee covers.

In “The Purple Piano Project,” Coach Schuester rallies the troops after last spring’s devastating Nationals loss in New York City. New Directions needs to recruit, and it needs its mojo back. But the antagonistic Sue Sylvester — now running for a seat in Congress – has once again made up her mind to squash the glee club’s dreams. Also, alliteration abounds.

Hi everybody! Welcome back from summer break to my weekly Glee write-ups. I enjoyed writing this feature last year, and it seems like enough of you enjoyed reading it to warrant my continuation, so on we go into season three!

The show made a few subtle (not often a word we associate with Glee) changes coming into this latest season to address criticisms from the last – most notably, that the show had grown aimless. To guard against that happening again, the creative trio behind Glee did something new over the summer – they outsourced their writing. Now Brad Falchuk, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan have a co-executive producer, two consulting producers and two staff writers to help them craft stories (most interesting to me is Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, a veteran of Spider-Man comic books and, yes, the recent musical). Continue reading »

Aug 022011
 

Last month, we mentioned a new tribute compilation of Los Angeles bands today covering their L.A. influences. Titled Beat LA, the punk-leaning album features city upstarts like No Age and Crystal Antlers digging deep into L.A.’s musical history to cover bands both obvious (The Doors, Minutemen) and less so (Thelonious Monster, 20/20). It’s out today and you can stream the whole thing below. Continue reading »