Covers, covers! It's cold, pull up the covers!

Just go over a few recent listens real quick.

Various Artists - Introducing Townes Van Zandt via the Great Unknown

I'm a huge Townes Van Zandt fan. Hell, my Mom used to drag ME through Van Zandt County on the way to Dallas as a child. Introducing... is a covers record and not a very good one either. Such great songs done with such a thrown away attitude. J. Tilman's cover of "My Proud Mountain" is forgettable as is Stephen Duffy's (founding member of Duran Duran) cover of "Poncho and Lefty." Don't waste your time.

Grade: 1.7

Hellsongs - Pieces of Heaven, A Glimpse of Hell

Hellsongs are a Swedish group that specialized is re-imagining metal in a haunting, yet gentle, way. Sparse, forceful, and beautiful can all be used to describe the music and the female vocals are at times over-powering in their emotion. This record has covers of Iron Maiden, Halloween, Accept, & Ozzy among others all set with cello, acoustic guitar and piano. A record like this is proof that great songs are great no matter how they are performed. I must, however, recommend the EP over this full length due to the quality of the production being a little more lo-fi and having a more airy quality to it.

Grade: 6.3

Lemonheads - Varshons


I'm a huge 1990s Lemonheads fan, but the newest incarnation of the band that appeared a few years ago isn't the same band. Gone is the youthful delusions and now we have the leftovers-semi-lucid echos of druggy ramblings. It'd be like meeting Chuck Bukowski at 4:30 AM as he's stumbling home and completely incoherent. That being said, this record of covers is actually quite good. Dando and Co.'s cover of G.G. Allin's "Layin' Up with Linda" is great as is Leonard Cohen's "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" with Liv Tyler and Linda Perry's "Beautiful" (what most people would recognize as a Christina Aguilera track). All have the tenderness that was present in so much of their earlier work. To bookend these three review I have to mention the cover of Townes Van Zandt's "Waiting Around to Die." Townes' original possessed an upbeat feel, but Evan injects a Cohen-esque aire to the track that makes it slightly more hopeful. A lot of Evan Dando fans were honestly waiting around for him to keel over, but after putting out a record of such quality, albeit no original tracks, I will keep an eye out for fresh material from them.

Grade: 6.8