Tag Archives: covers album

VARIOUS ARTISTS – Wish You Were Here: 50 Years Later

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In 2024, Pale Wizard Records did the unthinkable. They pulled together a bunch of underground rock bands and had them each contribute a track to a 50th anniversary tribute to Sparks’ career defining ‘Kimono My House’. Since none of the bands had much in common with Ron and Russell Mael’s distinctive and visionary sound, it shouldn’t have worked. With that record, Pale Wizard managed to pull off the even more unthinkable: they not only masterminded a very different take on an old classic, but they had the balls to know it would work on its own merits.

A year on, could they achieve similar greatness by asking some of the same faces to put their own stamp on Pink Floyd fan favourite ‘Wish You Were Here’? In terms of tall orders, that’s positively gargantuan when none of the clientele come from the school of prog rock. The featured artists don’t even have a “classic” sound in most cases. Nevertheless, everyone gives the material a square go, for better or worse.

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TRAVELS WITH BRINDLE – No. 1 In Heaven

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When covering other people’s material, there’s no point in phoning it in, and creating something that’s a flat but respectable reconstruction. It’s much better to make things your own, and re-imagine everything from the ground up – as with Type O Negative’s ‘Summer Breeze’ and Lalo Schifrin’s frankly bizarre disco rehash of the ‘Jaws’ theme, just to give a couple of great examples.

This concept isn’t lost on singer songwriter Chelsea Spear and her solo ukulele pop project Travels With Brindle. Their 2025 release ‘Number One In Heaven’ takes the bulk of the Sparks 1979 LP of the same name and melds it in her own image. Taking the six songs and stripping them down to basics, Spear allows for a closer inspection of some basic melodies. But does it work?

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SLOWER – Slower

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Slower. As the name implies, this band is all about the doom. However, this is doom with a twist. Bringing together members of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Kylesa, Year of The Cobra and others, the performers are famous in their own right, but nowhere near as famous as Slower’s choice of material. This debut album features five Slayer classics, each one drastically reimagined as a timeless doom/sludge piece; five numbers that end up invariably sounding like more like Acid King than Kerry King. It seems inconceivable that speed driven bangers that sound tracked a generation’s metallic apocalypse could take on the stance of Electric Wizard and Witch Mountain, but behind their comical name, Slower have made such things a striking reality.

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ROBERT REX WALLER, Jr. – See The Big Man Cry

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In 2016, Robert Rex Waller released his solo debut ‘Fancy Free’. On that record, the sometime collaborator with I See Hawks In L.A. put his own stamp on a well curated selection of cover tunes, often with mixed results. Great versions of Neil Young’s often overlooked ‘Albuquerque’ and Dylan’s ‘She Belongs To Me’ gave the album an easily approachable core, whilst a drastically reworked version of The Doors’ ‘Crystal Ship’ showed how Waller was unafraid of rebuilding material from the ground up. Even when the material that wasn’t quite as interesting, showed off a man with a rich voice. The album certainly could have done without the misjudged version of ‘Waterloo Sunset’, but the good often outweighed the bad.

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THE BEATERSBAND – Vol. Tre

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Italian punk ‘n’ roll outfit Beatersband began cranking out good time sounds in 2018. Although they spent a couple of their early years hampered by a pandemic lockdown in terms of reaching live audiences, they more than made up for that with a prolific output. By the end of 2022, their comprises three albums, several singles and a brilliant cassette (‘Un Tuffo Nel Passatto’) which supplies the ultimate crash course in their work to date.

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