Punk Chartbusters Volume 4, Various Artists
Covers are a weird thing, especially within punk music; usually punks either cover a song to a) Take the piss out of it completely or b) Because they have a genuine appreciation of the song; and, i'm sure you'll agree, it's easy to spot the difference between the two. Or is it? Welcome to the world of the unexpected, in this case a veritable 2 CD set which covers in total a mighty 53 songs for a relatively small fee. Due to the massive nature of the CDs i'll cover only a few of the tracks which I think represent the CD as a whole. read on...
CD 1 begins with the Gwyllions' cover of 'I Can hear Music' (Beach Boys) which starts the whole parade off well; it has absolutely spot on vocals, with the backing mimicking the Beach Boys' style perfectly ("wheeewww"), starting off at a sprightly pace and speeding up toward the end, with those backing vocals remaining firmly in place; topped of with a fade out. Nice. Following on the Sugababes' 'Overload' is significantly and satisfyingly beefed up by The Billy Rubin; and you can't help thinking for some reason that your parents would enjoy this record as much as you.
The covers are pulled off with style and flair, and even if you're unfamiliar with the original, its probable that you'll enjoy most of these; It is relatively odd that the Peace Brothers picked 'Frozen' by Madonna to cover - possibly a 10 on the hard-to-cover scale; and humorously they convert it to a bounding, jolly almost American country and Western song - kudos - and as a result all the depressing, slit-your-wrists action of the original is discarded like an unsuccessful lottery ticket.
Now, what with Wolverine being a German label, you have to expect that a portion of the songs will be sung in German - slightly above the standard of my GCSE German, yet still enjoyable to listen to, as the songs are performed well - and those of you who know German can sit there smug you know all the lyrics. Such examples include 'Major Tom' originally by Peter Schilling and performed by RauberTochter, and 'Alkohol' by Gronemeyer (apologies for the lack of punctuation on these).
There are those that aren't worth listening to of course; these include 'Livin la vida loca', covered by Dragster, which quite frankly sounds terrible; along with Stimilion's cover of 'I'll be there for you' which sounds almost identical to the original, and therefore has little merit; there are more, but for these there are others which compensate; for example Schandfleck's cover of 'Torn' (Natalie Imbruglia); which starts relatively subdued, but suddenly kicks off in a kind of schizophrenic spasm and turns out to be a half mocking, half angst filled product. Morgentot's 'layla' is also pulled off supremely, with the strong riff from the original (and I don't think you need me to tell you who wrote it) staying satisfyingly in place.
A mixed bag then, leaning more toward good than bad, but still with a fair few bad anomalies; but for £8 or so and 53 tracks you really can't complain too much. Play it full volume through the wall, so those pop obsessed on the other side can hear their favourite songs the way they should have been played.
nick
