Covers for Sunday

Apologies for the total lack of posts this week and apologies for the shortness of this post. I'll catch up on the posts I've missed during the week. Until then, here's your six covers, I hope you enjoy them.

I Could Be With Anyone by Manchester Orchestra (originally by Kevin Devine). Manchester Orchestra and Kevin Devine have been touring together since 2008 and have a split album due out soon.

Reptilia by Punch Brothers (originally by The Strokes). Another bluegrass style cover, they always seem to go down well. I've come to really appreciate the mandolin since I started this blog.

Solsbury Hill by Kyte (originally by Peter Gabriel). Covers of Peter Gabriel seem to have become more popular since Vampire Weekend started grabbing attention. I like this more than most of them.

Crazy by The Kooks (originally by Gnarls Barkley). This may be the most covered song of the last 5 years. It seems that way at least.

Let's Go Crazy by Riverboat Gamblers (originally by Prince). Some bands are just full of energy, this is one of them.

Lemon Tree by iZi (originally by Fool's Garden). Since Allister's cover of Time after Time last week was so popular I decided to include another punk-pop cover. iZi are a Turkish band, but the song's in English.

Covers for Sunday (on Monday)

Apologies for the lateness of Covers for Sunday this week, it being Monday. This post is late because we had guests yesterday and apparently it's rude for me to do this when we're entertaining and I never write my posts in advance, even though I know I should.


Free Falling - Kings of Convenience (originally by Tom Petty). This is one of two b-side's offered on the single Failure, the other is a cover of Joy Division's The Eternal. Both are really good and I'm sure I'll post The Eternal sometime soon.

Like I Love U - Maximo Park (originally by Justin Timberlake). Maximo Park's cover of Just Dance is fantastic, and one of the most popular covers I've posted, so here's another. This is a rarity in that I've never listened to the original, so I've no idea how similar it sounds or not. It is quite poppy and features to the best of my knowledge the only name check of Billingham in musical history.

Ruby Soho - Vampire Weekend (originally by Rancid). You've probably already got this, it has been all over blogs for the last week or so now, but just in case you haven't here it is. African music inspired pop band cover Californian punks, it is exactly as good as you'd expect.

Blister In The Sun - Still Standing (originally by Violent Femmes). Blister In The Sun is a classic, and it's the sort of classic that's hard to cover without murdering it. But Still Standing do a good job of covering it, making it different enough from the original to avoid it being a straight-up copy but still keeping the charm of the original.

Time After Time - Allister (originally by Cyndi Lauper). A friend at college gave me a mix-tape with this on back in the late 90's. I lost the tape and have tried from time to time to find this cover again, hampered by the fact I had no idea who had covered it. I finally located it last week, so here it is. It's a pretty standard punk cover, the drumming isn't great, or at least the production isn't great on the drumming, but it's a good little cover and a nice piece of nostalgia for me.

Teardrop - Newton Faulkner (originally by Massive Attack). Recorded in a lift with just an acoustic guitar I can not describe just how good this cover is. You're only cheating yourself if you don't listen to it.

Uncovered on Saturday

i guess pretty soon I'll be moving this to a different site. It isn't the best blog in the world, I'm well aware of that. But I've put a fair amount of time into it and I'd be pretty annoyed if it got deleted. Actually, I'd probably be raging. So its best all round if I move it. But that's a topic for another post. For now, let's move on to the music.

Jingle Jangle Morning by Mary Lou Lord. Researching her career I came across this quote about a confrontation with Courtney Love "It ended with me wetting myself and hiding from her in an alleyway after both of our tops had fallen down and she had chased me down Sunset Strip." I've got nothing to add.

There's An End by Holly Golightly. Guest vocalist on The White Stripes' Elephant she fills the role of over the top Englishness. There's nothing more we love than a cup of tea. Except football violence of course.

Out Of The Blue by Yonder Mountain String Band. This is pretty much indescribable, you really need to listen to it yourself. It is bluegrass, but its bluegrass for people who hate bluegrass. And for people who love bluegrass.

Velvet Underground by Jonathan Richman. For a long time I disliked Jonathan Richman and I have no idea why. I came across this track by chance on Hype Machine and started listening to more and more of his music. I was a fool to ever hold him in disdain and I try and make amends by playing some Jonathan Richman to more or less everyone I can. This means you too readers.

Another Horsedreamer's Blues by Counting Crows. After Automatic For The People the next album I really fell in love with was August and Everything After. These two albums formed the backbone of my listening habits, aided by Virgin Radio. Recovering the Satellites was finally released after what seemed like the longest wait for an album ever. It took so long to release that I'd already fallen in love with Suede and Britpop. This song is from Recovering the Satellites, I think its a great album but it never really got the praise or success that August and Everything After did.

Things The Grandchildren Should Know by Eels.

Bonus Eels track: Hey Man (Now You're Really Living).

Eels are one of those bands that I find it hard to choose songs from. I was tempted to put Jehovah's Witness here or Theme For A Pretty Girl That Makes You Believe In God or a live version of It's A Motherfucker with strings. That's part of the reason there's a bonus track. The reason I chose Hey Man (Now You're Really Living) in particular though is different. A month or so before I started this blog I was at the fair with my wife and kids and I had this song stuck in my head. I'd been toying with the idea of starting a blog for a while. On the way back from the fair I mentioned it to my wife, she told me it was a great idea and encouraged me to do it. We spent the journey home trying to think of names for the blog. Her favourite was The Music Snob, which I didn't choose because I'm not. Anyway, the whole time we were at the fair Hey Man (Now You're Really Living) was stuck in my head. So I thought I should post it before I moved the blog.

One final thought that probably is interesting only to me. I use Opera as my browser and it has a built in spellchecker. Generally it is a useful addition but it has some interesting omissions from its dictionary. For instance blog isn't recognised but motherfucker is. See you tomorrow for Covers.

On shuffle

new music on my hard drive gets put in a separate folder, a holding area if you will, before I've listened to it a couple of times and decided if I like it or not. I was listening to this tonight on shuffle and thought I'd share a random selection of songs from it.

Russian Literature by Maximo Park. I've been listening to them more and more over the last couple of weeks. I've got an excellent cover of there's lined up for this weeks Covers for Sunday. Given how popular there cover of Just Dance was I think you'll like this as well.

Cone Of Light by Almighty Defenders. King Khan, Mark Sultan and The Black Lips together. You should need no more convincing to listen to this, and if you do you're probably reading the wrong blog.

Deception by Blackalicious. I've got no idea what this song is doing in my new music folder. I first heard this song in 2003, loved it then and still do. But it is a great excuse to post it here. Some more hip-hop coming to the blog soonish, maybe this week but probably next week.

Freedom and Its Owner by Kings of Convenience. Like Blackalicious they've been around for nearly 10 years and only have 3 albums out. They did a couple of great covers early on that I'll feature in Covers for Sunday soon.

The Mystery Zone by Spoon. More goodness from Spoon. They seem to be the hottest indie band around at the moment, well deserved as well.

That's it for now, enjoy the songs.

Covers for Sunday

And this brings us up to date.

Oh My God by Lily Allen and Mark Ronson (originally by Kaiser Chiefs). I came across this earlier today on Hype machine. Lily Allen's vocals are good, even if I don't normally enjoy listening to her singing, and Mark Ronson's omnipresent horns are as good as usual. Everything a cover should be, even if I'm not quite sure if I like it or not.

Personal Jesus by Lisa Hannigan (originally by Depeche Mode). This is just phenomenal. I'd have never thought this song would work with the dulcimer as the main instrument, shows how little I know.

All My Friends by Franz Ferdinand (originally by LCD Soundsystem). This came up on shuffle on my mp3 player on the way to Mass. I took the bus this week so I could have an extra 10 minutes in bed. I think I have more covers of all my friends than any other song. If I remember I'll post them all next week.

Take On Me by A.C. Newman (originally by A-Ha). Just a lovely cover, well worth listening to regardless of your feelings about the original.

Jigsaw Falling Into Place by Stingray Music (originally by Radiohead). When I was really young Stingray was my favourite Gerry Anderson series, but then as I started secondary school and they started rerunning Captain Scarlet I grew to like that more. I mention this because there's no point me describing the cover of Radiohead. You're either going to download it or not, and nothing I say will change your mind. I don't know why its like this with Radiohead, but it is.

Enjoy the music.

Uncovered on Sunday

I'm late with this post for no good reason at all. There's no good reason at all why I haven't posted anything this week either. No increasingly heavy workload or shortness of time. There's not even a lack of anything to post about, I've had something in mind to blog about all week. That'll have to wait until next week when hopefully I'll be free of reasonless procrastination.

Push & Pull by Nikka Costa. She's got a really good voice, but this isn't the sort of song that holds my attention.

For Real by Okkervil River. I chose this particular track because my daughter says 'for real' to me all the time if she's not sure if I'm joking or not.

Still A World Away by The Popguns

There Are No Goodbyes by Sophia

Sam and Mona (the preacher and the teacher) stream by David Potts-Dupre. You can stream this and all the tracks from the album The Preacher and The Teacher here and download the full album/individual tracks here. There are links on the website to a couple of other places you can buy the cd from, or you can download it from Itunes.

Covers for Sunday will be up sometime later today as well.