Nevertheless David Pajo’s (Slint, Tortoise, Royal Trux, Zwan, etc) 9-song Misfits cover album, “Scream With Me” is killing me.  

All posts in the month of August will be covers.

This starts as Since You Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson, then breaks into a chorus of Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. 

Good luck not having this stuck in your head for a week.

All posts in the month of August will be covers.

This one is actually a cover of a cover and probably requires some backstory. 

The song is originally by Jimmy Cliff and was released in 1969. In 1974, Harry Nilsson and John Lennon recorded an album called Pussy Cats, in which they covered Jimmy Cliff, as well as several others, like Bob Dylan and Jimmy DeKnight. Wikipedia tells me this was Lennon’s “Lost Weekend period,” which explains the rowdy feeling the album has.

Turns out, The Walkmen are huge fans of the Pussy Cats album and joked about covering it. Then, as all good jokes do, it went way too far, and they actually recorded a song-for-song cover of the album.  Releasing it only 5 months after their last “proper” full-length album. 

So, cover of a cover.

There are several decent songs on the album, but for me Many Rivers To Cross, is hands down the best.

All posts in the month of August will be covers.

Atlantic City is easily one of my favorite songs of all time, if not the favorite. Hell, it was the first song posted here. So it’s no easy task to make a version of this song I’m going to like, but The Hold Steady did.

The piano intro is a great melancholy intro, exactly what you would expect for this song, then the balls kick in. It’s such a perfect ape of the “big Springsteen” sound.