iron & wine and ben bridwell

Playlist #240: Covers!

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Happy Monday, folks! I’m probably somewhere between Northern Virginia and Orlando, Florida, as you read this. The Wife is presenting at an education conference, and I’m joining her for moral and logistical support (and for the opportunity to not work for a week). Here’s a list of covers that I’ve enjoyed recently.

  1. Aimee Mann, “Rainy Days and Mondays”: A Carpenters cover? In this economy? It actually works pretty damn well, I think. She updates it in a few subtle ways, but mostly sticks to the original for her version.
  2. Mavis Staples, “Everybody Needs Love”: I loved this song when I heard the Drive-By Truckers original, and I love Mavis Staples’s version almost as much. Her voice carries the right tone and quality for the tune, and belies the age the woman actually is. I love it.
  3. Marc Sibilia, “Bittersweet Symphony”: His cover utilizes the same symphonic sample as the Verve Pipe’s original, but everything built around that seems more subdued, more subtle. It’s good stuff.
  4. The Presidents of the United States of America, “Kick Out the Jams”: Gotta love a band gutsy enough to take on an MC5 song, especially this one, but they manage to pull it off with some nervy energy and chutzpah.
  5. Phoebe Bridgers, “It’ll All Work Out”: I didn’t think it would be possible to slow down this Tom Petty number, but she does. I do miss the mandolin from the original, though.
  6. Iron & Wine and Ben Bridwell, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”: A mellower, folkier version of the U2 classic.
  7. Margaret Glaspy, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain”: I needed a slow, beautiful cover of CCR today, didn’t you?
  8. Willie Nelson, “Don’t Give Up (feat. Sinead O’Connor)”: Willie’s voice has just become this weathered, worn thing that just keeps getting better for the songs he sings. Fits perfectly, and Sinead O’Connor is a great duet partner for him.
  9. Bob Seager, “New Coat of Paint”: Seager turns Tom Waits’s raucous, bluesy number into…well, it’s not ’80s blooze-rock, not quite, but it does take some of the subtlety and nuance out of things. It’s still a fun cover, though.
  10. Robert Plant & Allison Krauss, “Quattro (World Drifts In)”: Speaking of nuance and subtlety, Plant and Krauss manage to inject a little bit more into this Calexico number. I dig it almost as much as I love the original, and I really love the original.

Playlist #231

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Happy Monday, folks. A lot of new music came out last week that I really dug, and I’m still going through it and listening. But hey, the playlist waits for no man, except sometimes me when I forget that it’s Monday and I have to post one of these.

  1. Neko Case, “Winchester Mansion of Sound”: Case’s music continues to grow and shift; she’s never content to just coast by on what she’s done before. This is probably one of my favorites off the new album.
  2. Jeff Tweedy, “Cry Baby Cry”: Dude dropped a triple album on Friday. That’s wild. This is not, unfortunately, a cover of the Beatles song of the same name, but it is, fortunately, quite a good song anyway. The whole album is pretty good, honestly, though I feel like some of the lyrics could’ve used a second pass.
  3. Amanda Shires, “The Details”: I have never been divorced, as I’m sure most folks know. That being said, this song sounds like what I imagine divorce feels like, and it makes me uncomfortable and more than a little voyeuristic, like I’m listening in on a couple in the final throes of the inevitable end.
  4. David Gray, “Kathleen”: Sometime in the past few years, Draw the Line somehow became my favorite David Gray album, and this one of my favorite songs off that album. I can’t adequately explain the why of either of those, so instead I just accept them and continue grooving to the album and this song in particular.
  5. Bruce Springsteen, “Reason to Believe”: I always enjoy the work of Bruce the Storyteller. Here, it’s a series of vignettes with a common theme: at the end of a hard day, when the world wears you down and tells you to just give up, folks still find a reason to go on.
  6. Andrew Bird, “So Much Wine, Merry Christmas”: I learned the lead break from this song a few months ago, and it’s a great joy to play.
  7. Buckingham Nicks, “Frozen Love”: This album has finally appeared on streaming, so it’s okay that I left my copy in Oklahoma with my dad back in April.
  8. Doechii, “Anxiety”: It uses that one Gotye song (you know the one, he only did the one) as a basis for a very different tune.
  9. The Presidents of the United States of America, “Kick Out the Jams”: Who doesn’t love an MC5 cover? It’s suitably quick and jagged, and I kinda love it.
  10. Iron & Wine and Ben Bridwell, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”: Speaking of covers, here’s Iron & Wine and the dude from Band of Horses doing an U2 cover. It sounds exactly how you think that will sound.

Playlist #64

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Another week, another playlist! Don’t forget to support me making music over on Patreon. I’m posting a mix of one of my songs done by my brother next Monday, so be sure to check it out!

  1. Ezra Furman & the Harpoons, “Mysterious Power”: This guy does a lot of the music for a tv show called Sex Education on Netflix. It’s a funny show, you should check it out. And the music is pretty solid, too.
  2. Jesse Malin, “Crawling Back To You”: Saw this song on a Jesse Malin album I downloaded over the weekend. “Oh, it has the same name as that Tom Petty song,” I thought to myself. Folks, it is that Tom Petty song, and it’s a pretty good cover of it.
  3. The Beatles, “You Really Got A Hold On Me”: You can’t go wrong with the Beatles covering a doo-wop number. You just can’t.
  4. Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Who’ll Stop The Rain”: There’s just something about CCR songs that always get me in a good mood.
  5. Tom Waits, “The Earth Died Screaming”: The Wife wants me to put together a playlist of weird songs. I told her it’d just be a Tom Waits playlist, then.
  6. The Gaslight Anthem, “Biloxi Parish”: I think The Gaslight Anthem may be one of my top five bands of the past fifteen or so years.
  7. Fleetwood Mac, “Rhiannon”: Just how common is the name Rhiannon, anyway? I can’t imagine there are too many of them wandering around.
  8. Jack Johnson, “Banana Pancakes”: I hate bananas.
  9. Iron & Wine and Ben Bridwell, “This Must Be The Place”: Features the line, “Sing into my mouth,” which is probably the grossest thing I’ve ever heard Sam Beam sing.
  10. Neil Young, “Down By The River”: Neil Young gives me hope that even my crappy guitar solos aren’t so bad. “Solo? You mean play the same note 32 times in a row, right?”

Playlist #29

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Happy Monday! Thanksgiving is fast approaching, and with it my lack of desire to do anything other than lounge around in bed all day. It’s getting colder outside and the days are shorter, so let’s listen to some music, what do you say?

  1. The Cactus Blossoms, “Mississippi”: David Lynch put this one in the revival Twin Peaks series. I liked the song, didn’t care for the show.
  2. Calexico, “Guero Canelo”: As previously stated, I’m a sucker for basically anything these guys wanna do, music-wise.
  3. The Decemberists, “We All Go Down Together”: Watched The Suicide Squad over the weekend. Loved the movie, especially the soundtrack, which featured a Decemberists song at one point. Not this one (no, it was “Sucker’s Prayer”), but I love this song regardless.
  4. The Georgia Satellites, “Keep Your Hands To Yourself”: If there’s a better song about waiting until marriage, I haven’t heard it.
  5. Glen Phillips, “Revelator”: Did not realize until quite recently that this is, in fact, a Gillian Welch cover. Live and learn, I guess.
  6. Golden Smog, “Until You Came Along”: I love the harmonies in this song. Love them.
  7. The Grass Roots, “I’d Wait A Million Years”: Every single song I have ever heard by the Grass Roots has been a banger. This one is no different.
  8. Hockey, “Song Away”: I don’t remember where I first heard this song. Probably on a TV show or something. But I dig it.
  9. Iron & Wine and Ben Bridwell, “This Must Be The Place”: I’ve said before that I dig it when Sam Beam (the guy from Iron & Wine) collaborates with pretty much anyone. I haven’t ever heard a bad song come from him collaborating, and if he and, say, Calexico wanted to spend the rest of forever working together again and again and again, I would not complain.
  10. The National, “Wake Up Your Saints”: “Wake up your saints, Jenny, I need them,” pleads Matt Berninger. Same, Matt. I could use a saint or two in my corner.