record of the day: Tortoise and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy: The Brave and the Bold

I don't think i get this recent trend of artists putting out cover records. there's always a big risk when a group releases a covers record--the music will be immediately compared to the source, and often times, their renditions are completely off the mark, dealing a blow to the credibility of the artist doing the covers. take for example 2000's The Covers Record by Cat Power. With one shitty covers record, Chan Marshall managed to blow through all of the good will she had accrued with What Would the Community Think? and Moon Pix. The point is, it's difficult enough to nail one cover successfully, and it's almost impossible to float an entire record doing it.

Which brings us to The Brave and the Bold, a collaboration between Will Oldham under his guise of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Tortoise. and i'll give them credit--it's not horrible, and the selections are incredibly diverse. but still it seems like a colossal waste of time for artists as accomplished as Oldham and Tortoise to be doing stuff like this. The casual listener will immediately be drawn to the "famous" covers, Springsteen's "Thunder Road" and Elton John's "Daniel." while their interpretations of these songs are somewhat interesting, they seem almost overwrought to me. I once saw Oldham perform "Thunder Road" in concert in Pittsburgh, PA about five years ago. the version i heard that night was very true to the original, with Oldham dialing down even Springsteen's energy on the track from Born to Run. then he decided to invite Tortoise to the party and they pretty much mangle it.

All of the tracks on the recording are overbearing--their version of the Minutemen's "It's Expected I'm Gone" doesn't have any of the force of the original--it's almost as if they sat down and decided to suck all of the energy out the track and then commit it to tape.

and so it goes with this record. after listening to it, i'm forced to wonder how it would have been had these guys not collaborated and instead have decided to release a record of covers. i think this would have been much better had Oldham just done it on his own, without inviting the Krautrock freaks to the party. Grade: B-