April 26, 2002

 
As I've made clear in the previous post, the Pavement covers that I found on Audiogalaxy are a pretty miserable bunch, for the most part. I'm not sure why. I don't think it's because of my strong sentimental attachment to the songs of Pavement, because my love of most of those GBV songs is similarly intense. I think the running thread in why most of them are bad might be because how most of the bands don't seem to get why Pavement and all those songs were so perfect in the first place. I guess I should get right to it...

I'll start with Grandaddy's version of "Here", for both it's ubiquity and the fact that "Here" is by far the most-covered Pavement song in my findings. Grandaddy's version is pretty likeable, they play the song in Pavement's live-version arrangement, ie big and loud. Grandaddy are essentially simultaneously a poor-man's Pavement and an even-poorer-man's Radiohead. I give Grandaddy some credit for fucking around and being a bit playful with the song, to the point of making up their own verse - that's very SM of them. They still manage to suck a lot of the greatness out of the song, and make it sound pretty ordinary.

Still, this is preferable to the horrible crime against music that is Richard Buckner's version of the same song. It pains me to hear this thing - the man basically turns the song into a Smog tune, which is just inexcusable. Contrary to popular opinion, absolutely nothing about Pavement was lifeless and smug, lazy or pathetic, though everything about Smog is. I hate Bill Callahan's drab voice, and Buckner's impression of it is only that much worse than the real thing. This is the outright butchering of a classic pop song, and Buckner should pay for this, do some hard time in indie jail or something. His version with Calexico is only marginally better, if just because Calexico adds a bit of faux-country texture to it, and Buckner sings a bit more melodically.

I can't say that I quite like the Tindersticks version of "Here", but at least I can respect it. They make it sound just like a soft-rock 70's AM radio song, sort of like a Jimmy Webb song. I suppose it's okay as a novelty - though I'm sure that it is not, it sounds a bit like a joke to me.

Holly Golightly's cover of "Box Elder" is pretty nice - they speed it up, make it rock a bit more. It's pretty average indie-pop, nothing objectionable. The same goes for The Wedding Present's version - it's likable, but nothing special. One thing that I noted listening to both of these versions is how when played with distortion and standard tuning, the main riff resembles Velocity Girl's "Sorry Again". Hmm.

Unquestionably the most likable and personalized of all the Pave covers that I've found, Cat Power's rendition of "We Dance" is as lovely as the best of Chan Marshall's work. She makes the song her own without compromising the song's greatness, something none of the other artists mentioned here even come close to. Tom Barman and Friends gives the same song a shot in a live recording and pales in comparison to Cat Power - it's not awful, but it sounds very ordinary and pedestrian. Like most of the covers, it suffers from not being played in the same tuning that Pavement originally played them in. It doesn't take much work to find out what tunings Malkmus used online - I'm not sure why more of these people don't put in a bit more effort and find out so that they can play the songs the way they are meant to be heard.

Certainly the worst victim of the standard-tuning curse is the Dharma Sons version of "AT&T", which sounds like a band of Professional Musicians cleaning up a song which is meant to be intentionally sloppy and punchdrunk. It's just not right. It's like being at a restaurant and getting a well-done steak when you asked for it to be medium rare. You just want to ask the waiter to take it back, you know?

Thankfully, some band called The Miracle of 86 manage to get it right in their cover of "Range Life". It's very true to the original, to the point that they even improvise the last verse and make up their own band disses on the spot, just like Malkmus would do live. Nicely done, guys.

Mallow is another band that I know nothing about, they sound like a garage band, and do a pretty straight-foward cover of "In The Mouth A Desert". They sound like they could be a pretty good Pavement tribute band, really. If they were, I'd hire them to play at my birthday party, if I had one. This goes for Phish as well, though I'm sure they are way out of my price-range. Their live version of "Gold Soundz" feels just about right, but still has a nice feeling of amateurishness about it that brings to mind that of a tribute band. Trey Anastasio messes up the lyrics in the middle, but covers them up in a nice Malkmus-esque way, which wins them some bonus points in my book.

I'm not sure what to make of Bettie Serveert's cover of "Trigger Cut" - it straddles a fine line between being a nice personalized version of the song, and just being boring and average in a way specific to the band itself. I suppose I like their arrangement, but the personality of the band doesn't work for me. My feelings about The Wedding Singers version of "Major Leagues" isn't far off - it's fine enough, I guess, but I just don't like these guys. The Wedding Singers do get points for picking a song from Pavement's least popular LP to cover, though.

Finally, I've got some nice things to say about Static Ritual's live cover of the song that gives this blog it's name, "Flux = Rad". Yes! This rocks! You guys rule! They did it right! Even Pavement themselves couldn't pull this one off live - kudos, whoever you are!

 
On a whim, I decided to find as many Guided By Voices covers as I could on Audiogalaxy. Overall, it's a competant bunch of covers (unlike the Pavement covers which I found, most of which verged on outright blasphemy - I'll talk about them later), but nothing that really knocked me out.

One of the best of the bunch is Jon Auer's rendition of "Gold Star For Robot Boy", which essentially answers the question "What if Elliot Smith wrote and recorded "Gold Star For Robot Boy"?" It's a pleasant, melancholy version of the song; Auer's voice sounds really lovely. You can tell that Auer must really love the song just by hearing it. Nicely done.

Local H's version of "Smothered In Hugs" is a lot cleaner than the GBV original, which I think is to it's credit. I've always felt the Bee Thousand version was noisey/sloppy to the point that it obscured the loveliness of the melody. Still, the singer's voice is kind of unpleasant, I much prefer Sparklehorse's version, if just because the melody of the song sounds a lot better when a guy who sounds like a half-asleep Michael Stipe sings it.

I'm pretty fond of Kitty Badass' cover of "Game of Pricks", for a few reasons - one, because they just do a competant girl-punk version of the Alien Lanes original; two, because the lead singer's voice has a really nice snarl to it; and three, because I appreciate the gender reversal of the lyrics. Kitty Badass do a nice job of picking up on the punk aspects of the tune, while Jim Adkins' solo acoustic version captures the early Beatles-ishness of the song. His version is pleasant, but a bit forgettable. Jimmy Eat World's cover is a version of the Tigerbomb/live arrangement, which earns them big GBV geek points even though I don't really care for the unnecessary intro on that version. It's such a faithful cover that it really does just sound like current line-up GBV with some other guy singing lead instead of Bob. My Vitriol's version is also the Tigerbomb arrangement, but they play it with a more ethereal intro, and heavier Nirvana-esque soft/load dynamics. I imagine that if Kurt Cobain wrote the song, this is how he would have played it.

Deus' "Motor Away" is a nice acoustic version with some pleasantly warbling vocals - it captures the sadness of the lyrics more than the original GBV version, but still doesn't do much for me. Superdrag's version is a lot like Jimmy Eat World's "Game of Pricks" - just like the original, but with a lesser singer. They do project a genuine love for the song in the recording, though. The Salteens, on the other hand, do a distinctive twee indie pop version that is cute, but maybe a little too cute for its own good.

Unquestionably the most amusing and unique GBV cover that I found is Kompressor's vaguely disturbing faux-German electro version. The synth arrangement is cute, and the angry-mad-scientist vocals are really funny. I like it a lot more than Join'R's straight-ahead garage band version, even though it's nice and earnest enough. Join'R certainly embrace the big-giant-anthem nature of the song, which is much to their credit.

I give The Fastbacks a lot of credit for covering one of my personal favorites "Teenage FBI", but I wish they'd done a better job. Their version is very fast and bratty, emphasizing the "someone tell me why" parts of the song. I also wish Chore had done a better job of playing "Subspace Biographies" - another big personal favorite, and also a lot more obscure than most of the other covers that I found, which gives Chore some bonus points. The problem with Chore's version is not that it's too sloppy; but that it's far too polished and clean, it sounds too ordinary for my liking. They play the song a bit heavier than GBV too - I'm pretty sure the rhythm guitarist is playing in drop D tuning, making the song a lot beefier-sounding than it should be.

New Radiant Storm King's version of "I Am A Scientist" from a split single with GBV is an odd one - on one hand, the music is very faithful, and on the other the singer butchers the song with his mush-mouthed vocals which make it sound as though he is actually mocking the song. The pointless sloppy backing vocals they added to the arrangement at the end doesn't help, either.

The Grifters' drunken live version of "Postal Blowfish" is very true to the spirit of live GBV, and is pretty fun, but doesn't quite gel. Real Lulu's version is a lot better - the girl who is singing sounds kinda creepy and possessed, almost like that girl who sings on all of the best A Certain Ratio songs. It's got a really nice "we are members of an evil rock cult, the Branch Pollardians" vibe to it.

Finally, The Breeders' version of "Shocker In Gloomtown" is nice and smooth, and nails the song without surpassing the original. Just plain pleasant, really.

Again, this is pretty decent bunch of covers. I'll get to the Great Pavement Song Massacre later on, or tomorrow...