January 31, 2006
The Brave and The Bold
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billie has a new album with Tortoise:
Songs covered here include Elton John’s Daniel, Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road, Milton Nascimento’s Cravo e Canela, Melanie’s (Some Say) I Got Devil and Devo’s That’s Pep. Plus tunes by Richard Thompson, Don Williams, Minutemen, Quix’o'tic - if there’s someone out there who can say it’s not an intriguing track-list, I’d love to know what they’re listening to. But it’s more than a curiosity. The best covers are the ones given both respect and new interpretations: Thunder Road, with its slow melody and non-pompous production, is particularly haunting. The Elton John and Richard Thompson songs, though more faithful, get a spooky desperation from Oldham’s bony, dolorous voice, while Melanie’s melodramatic folk becomes a stoic song of sin and redemption. Weak points are the Nascimento and Devo covers - the first sounds like soulless Santana, the second just sounds naff - but there are enough moments of complex, nuanced, lingering beauty here to keep drawing you back.
