Published on Apr 25, 2006
Remarkably, very few other artists have used Under
The Covers as a title for their cover albums. Unremarkably,
that may be because cover albums invariably suck.
There, I said it. I doubt there are few, if any,
exceptions.
When you take a respected artist’s work and offer a
new take, it either sounds exactly the same as the original and
offers nothing new to the composition, or it’s so unfaithful to the
original it does the exact opposite of its intention to praise.
However, as staples of recording careers akin to the “double live”
LP, cover records do offer fans a glance into their loved one’s
roots, as this collection certainly does.
Covers are fine on stage or even placed sparingly on
some full-lengths, but they should never comprise an LP (see Rod
Stewart’s American Songbook series, a clear case of idol
worship). Even a duo as enticing as 80s popster Susanna Hoffs (The
Bangles) and 90s singer-songwriter Matthew Sweet can’t make a good
cover album.
The interesting cover choices of Marmalade’s “I See
The Rain,” Love’s “Alone Again Or” and Velvet Underground’s “Sunday
Morning” just make me want to dust off the originals.
The well-paired team sound damn good on all 15
tracks, particularly on Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” and “Everyone
Knows This Is Nowhere.” But, Sweet and Hoffs neither improve nor
desecrate any of their choices — cuts from the Beatles, Bee Gees,
The Mamas And The Papas and the Zombies among them.
Lowlights include a stiff-sounding rendition of The
Who’s “The Kids Are Alright” that dates the song beyond its years.
The cover of Dylan’s “It’s Alright Now, Baby Blue” sounds empty and
out of place.
The collection on the whole suffers from
pointlessness. The sum of the recognizable parts does not convert
in the delivery, and really, the best feature of the Under The
Covers is its criminally underused title. But the second
chapter-implying Vol. 1 is a release I could do without.