Editorial Reviews
Music Review:
Music Review
Freakin' Out/All Over Me, Pt. 2 [CD-single] [Import]
Brahms: Sonatas For Cello And Piano
Music: Scratching the Whole [CD-single]
Battle Flag [CD-single] [Import]
Barandua Our Songs/Nuestras Canciones
Amazon.com
Cover Magazine is an album of covers by Giant Sand. Howe Gelb, the frontman of these sun-baked Arizona country-rock legends, is a musician's musician who counts PJ Harvey, Grandaddy, and pretty much the whole of today's discerning alt.country set among his devoted fans. Now, however, he means to give something back: Cover Magazine fields a set of covers of Gelb's friends and influences, closing with a three-song live set recorded on tour with Grandaddy in 2001. The cover versions should be your first point of call: mostly recorded with Calexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino as the rhythm section, they reinvent Gelb's picks as expansive epics, creeping with weird voodoo and sand-blasted melancholy. Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" becomes a quietly sinister conga shuffle. Johnny Cash's "Wayfaring Stranger" segues into a bare, whispered take on the Sinatra classic "Fly Me to the Moon." And X's "Johnny Hit and Run Pauline" finds Polly Harvey weighing in with a fraught, tense drawl during the chorus. The pick, though, is a wonderful, finger-clicking run through Sonny Bono's "The Beat Goes On"--and it's so good, they reprise it on the three-song live set, along with "Blue Marble Girl," a new Grandaddy number, and "The Inner Flame," a song by sadly deceased Giant Sand guitarist Rainer Ptacek. --Louis Pattison
Album Description
A collection of songs (except one) written by others besides Howe Gelb. Though the original artists covered here run the gamut stylistically from classic rock to punk to heavy metal, country and trip hop, all are given the Giant Sand treatment. PJ Harvey lends her vocal talents to X's 'Johnny Hit and Run Pauline'. The 3 closing tracks feature members of Grandaddy captured live on tour in Europe during the Spring of 2001.