I have been accused of liking everything I review, so I am going to make a concerted effort to find some absolute rubbish to listen to in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I have been enjoying this absolutely lovely eight track EP of covers by Will Oldham.
Albums of cover versions are often recorded as contractual obligations or to buy an artist some time while they are working on new original songs, but this has evidenly been made as a result of Oldham's sheer love of music in general and these songs in particular.
This is a very low key release with no fanfare and the packaging does not contain a tracklisting, just a list of the writers of each song. For TracksandGigs this has meant some 'internet research' had to be carried out. Each of the songs is recorded with a light acoustic sound with hushed vocals and harmonies (courtesy of Meg Baird from Espers), making them sound like a companion piece to last year's mellow 'The Letting Go'.
The first track is a cover of Mickey Newbury's 'I Came To Hear The Music' which happens to be my Mum's favourite song ever and apparently the first song I ever heard, as a child of a few day's old! Here it sounds quite beautiful, sparse and low key but still powerful. Oldham's version of Bjork/Thom Yorke's duet 'I've Seen It All' is equally memorable and almost hypnotic. Those who have never heard the song before will find themselves hanging on every word of the extremely engaging lyrics.
The quality continues, there is no duff track here at all. Halfway through he even throws in a brand new original song, 'I'm Loving The Street' which is maybe the most joyful Oldham song I have ever heard. The highlight comes at the end with an unexpected version of R Kelly's 'The World's Greatest', drawing attention to the power of the words and doing away with the vocal histrionics, it is a revelation.
This is a really wonderful collection of songs and a joy to listen to.
9.0
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment