AV Club Undercover 2011
Figured rather than tacking this on to last year’s and having it get unwieldy……..
Can’t say I know this first song. It’s a George Michael song. Also can’t say I like it even not knowing the source material. I like Beam’s voice and all but there’s very little to grab on to here. Not as great a start as last years Ted Leo cover.
I am interested in hearing some of the selections they’ve chosen for this year. The Jawbreaker song in particular, the Clash, the Ted Leo song, the Prince song, the Pixies song….
http://www.avclub.com/articles/iron-and-wine-covers-george-michael,53063/
Comments
I loved this. Sounded like a mix between The Duke Spirit and Joe Gideon and The Shark. And I have never heard of this band..need to start tracking the back catalogue methinks.
Telekinesis cover Belle & Sebastian Like Dylan in the Movies
I don’t know the original or the band doing the cover, it wasn’t terrible. The drummer/singer was a little nasally, which sort or bothered me. I never felt the urge to turn it off though, does that make it a success?
John said:Fixed link: http://www.avclub.com/articles/telekinesis-covers-belle-sebastian,53071/
Haha oops. Thanks!
I liked this as well. I have never even heard of this band, but the original is one of my favorites (and probably as much of an influence on my son’s name as either the folk singer or the author).
Same as last week, this hit the marks for me: Full band, keeping the same basic melody, changing it up just enough to make it different (in this case slightly more amped up and less twee than the original).
(and probably as much of an influence on my son’s name as either the folk singer or the author or the 90210 hottie).’
FTFY.
I also really loved this. I’m pretty easy with these, though: use a full band. Try. That’s pretty much all I ask.
Exactly. Full band. Try. That’s it. Although I’m open to an acoustic rendition of something where the original is blatantly not acoustic, but it’s got to be totally inventive. Like I would not have been against someone trying an acoustic version of that LCD song if they did it right. They better be damn sure they do it right and it’s a tough needle to thread. But I’m open to the possibilities. The dude from Clem Snide doing the Journey cover on ukelele during the last batch of covers was an example of one I liked.
A mostly acoustic cover of Don’t You Want Me by the Human League. Not a fan of the acoustic versions as I’ve stated repeatedly. That being said this was pleasant enough. I definitely didn’t hate it. Nowhere near on the level of the past 2 weeks though.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/rocky-votolato-and-matt-pond-pa-cover-the-human-le,53061/
Kevin said:I liked this as well. I have never even heard of this band, but the original is one of my favorites (and probably as much of an influence on my son’s name as either the folk singer or the author).
Same as last week, this hit the marks for me: Full band, keeping the same basic melody, changing it up just enough to make it different (in this case slightly more amped up and less twee than the original).
Why am I shocked to find out that you are a Belle and Sebastian fan?
Probably cause Kev is all grumblegrumblegrumble and Belle and Sebastion is all wheeeeeeee!. Still, they’re a hard band to deny.
John said:Probably cause Kev is all grumblegrumblegrumble and Belle and Sebastion is all wheeeeeeee!.
This sums it up brilliantly and hysterically.
Also the fact that I pretty much vocally and vehemently proclaim my hatred for all things “twee” and they are pretty much the original twee band of the modern indie age. But I guess since it was semi-novel when they first started doing it and then became a contrived shtick for countless bands afterward, that’s more what I take issue with.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/low-covers-toto,53049/
Low, covering Africa by Toto. Not a fan of this cover. I love the original song and I love Low They just didn’t do this justice at all.
I was into the harmonies, but the song could have really used a strong guitar to make it a solid cover.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/smith-westerns-cover-tom-petty-the-heartbreakers,53050/
Smith Western’s doing Petty’s “American Girl”. I love the original, and I’ve been o.k. with the songs I’ve heard from this band’s record. But between the singer’s douchey commentary in the beginning, and his annoying vocals, I didn’t like this at all. And the instrumentation and music didn’t really do much different from the original.
Don’t like.
ugh. terrible. Everything about this is wrong. I don’t know how likely I was to ever listen to one of their songs before-hand, but now I am pretty certain I will go out of my way to ignore them.
Huh, I missed Low doing Africa. I really would have expected to love it, seeing as I love Low and I absolutely love Africa, but they took all the fun and energy out of it. It sounded like they were missing a part of their band.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/of-montreal-covers-the-white-stripes,53048/
Of Montreal covering The White Stripes. Pretty faithful rendition. But since I’ve signed a blood oath to despise anything this shitty band (Of Montreal) does, then strictly on the record I hate it.
I might as well have listened to the original. I don’t get doing a cover without adding anything to it.
Also, it seems as though they’re releasing the videos out of order from the performances. About 1 minute in to the video you can see that Parts and Labor cover “Runaway” by Kanye West.
Parts and Labor doing Runaway is going to be fucking amazing.
Kev, I’m curious about why you hate Of Montreal. Specifically, which of the many many reasons they’re infuriating most infuriates you? And why those reasons are so awful that you can’t enjoy their otherwise occasionally fun dance music.
Let’s see…..There’s the Outback Steakhouse commercial. I don’t have any issue with bands licensing their music at all. But having a company re-write the lyrics to a song to turn it into a jingle about steak being fun? Ugh……..there’s the fact that their whole over the top glam shtick seems completely contrived and forced to me. If there music was amazing and bombastic it might sit better to me, but it’s not so it doesn’t…….pretty much every interview I’ve ever read with that Kevin Barnes makes him seem like a totally pretentious douche bag……and mostly every one of their songs that I’ve ever heard does absolutely nothing for me…It’s not rocking enough for me to be good rock, it’s not dancey enough to be good dance music, and it’s not glammy and decadent enough to be good glam music.
Are those reasons enough?
I agree 100%, except for the good dance music part. Not all of it. But enough for me not to hate them.
Huh! very cool.
I didn’t like it. Far too sleepy for me. And it barely even retained the original melody. Honestly if I didn’t know what song it was going in, I never would have recognized it.
This is not an A.V. Undercover video, but here’s St. Vincent covering Nico.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-mountain-goats-cover-jawbreaker,57069/
One of my favorite bands, covering one of my favorite bands.
<3 John Darnielle
I was so mad about being at work all day with my no-speakers computer and no-flash ipad, unable to watch this video
So mad that I forgot I had like 30 other computers around me with speakers and flash-playing internets that would have sufficed for watching it
but anyway, I watched it twice when I got home
because YES.
Really liked the Mountain Goats cover, I don’t know the original but it was nice to finally see some life in these songs.
Parts and Labor cover Kanye West Runaway
Tried to like it but it’s just odd and it didn’t help that the singing was a pain to listen to.
Yeah, I didn’t like this weeks. I don’t like Kanye West at all, and this felt a little too weird to actually be a cover.
I turned it off. I was annoyed and bored. And volume levels were off.
Whaa? Really? Did you guys all quit before it got awesome or something? I thought this was fucking great (and the levels were just fine — they’re a noise band!)
Maybe it’s just that I’m the only one who liked the original?
I like the original song.
Surfer Blood had an album that really grabbed me last year. It was fun, simple rock. But you watch them live and you see that they are amateur as fuck, and some producer somewhere (with enough takes) saved their sound.
The cover had no flare, and it would have been more creative to have a guy singing those girl parts anyway. I’m sure the lead singer is just afraid because he sounds terrible.
…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead played tight, but they didn’t do much with the song either. It just carried on, I was expecting them to really blow it up around the 3-4 minute mark but alas.
Turned the Sloan cover off, I think that “Cars” song is a tough cover to do creatively.
The Surfer Blood and Sloan covers I both give A for effort. Full band, hewed close to the melody of the original song, seemed to be having fun with it. That being said, neither one really blew me away.
That Trail of Dead cover I hate just because of the introduction article which made them sound like idiotic douches who wanted to do it but were too dumb or too arrogant to realize that you pick from the songs they give you, and insisted on doing their own choice.
O.K. I realize posting on here is slow, but how has nobody posted this yet.
They might as well pack this whole project in because nothing is going to beat this. I don’t even particularly like TMBG or this song. But this made me smile so much.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/they-might-be-giants-covers-chumbawamba,53068/
Shit these guys still got it.
Hahaha, the camera zooms in on keyboard John doing that weird red warbly thing with his right hand, and then the camera pans over to his left hand, which is doing nothing, and is nowhere to be found.
That was absolutely wonderful. I love these guys so much.
Also, who knew Ira Glass was in a band?
I honestly never liked this guys. Their fans that I knew or was acquainted with were always ridiculously annoying.
But I loved this, and I also love those dvd/cdr’s you got Dylan a few years back are awesome. I always want him to put those on.
It was always going to be hard to follow up last week’s excellence, but this isn’t half bad. I don’t like the original song all that much, but I like the Get Up Kids. Pretty straight forward. But full band, they put the effort into it, didn’t screw with the melody/tune at all. Decent showing.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-get-up-kids-cover-girls-and-boys-by-blur,53069/
The dude pulled off that bassline. That’s all you can really ask for. Everything else is secondary.
John said:The dude pulled off that bassline. That’s all you can really ask for. Everything else is secondary.
Yeah, that’s what I noticed as well.
huge blur AND guk fan here. i hated this.
his voice? ugh that was painful to listen to.
So has anybody been keeping up with these? I have to say that with only 1 more to go, this year has been much more lackluster than last years. The Against Me! cover of the Clash was o.k. but didn’t really add anything to the original. The Decembrists cover of Sugar was o.k.
The Hold Steady cover of Huey Lewis and the news was fitting in theory (both are horrible, white bread Dad Rock) but they managed to make a bad song even worse.