Verbatim, from the mind of Portland newcomer and unconventional sound artist Jason Urick regarding his beguiling new record I Love You for Thrill Jockey:

"This record was recorded and pieced together during a very transitional period of my life. A lot was in flux in regards to location on the planet and people and relationships within said planet. My feeling regarding these changes had a tendency to fluctuate between very excited and confident with uncertainty and alternatingly unsure and nervous, sometimes fluctuating between the two rapidly from second-to-second. I became very hyper aware of the relationships of opposite emotions and started to notice these types of relationships more and more around me. Around this time I was recommended by a friend to watch the movie I Love You by Marco Ferreri. In this movie Christopher Lambert plays a character that falls in love with a talking keychain. More specifically a keychain that only said the words 'I Love You' when whistled at. Around that time I was starting to mold the material that would make up this album into more cohesive pieces. I began to use the phrase 'I Love You' as a mantra of sorts while working on this material. Running the phrase over and over in my head until the words started to break down and render the phrase foreign again. In these meditations I became more at peace with the music making process and more unsure/unfamiliar with it at the same time. This feeling spilled over into my understanding of myself going from feeling very in tune in body and mind to completely adrift in a large universe, again in very rapid succession until all that remained was a vibration. It feels silly and potentially useless to describe such personal and brief experiences in words, however it is my hope that within the record I am able to communicate these ideas/feeling to sound where it might make more sense." -Jason Urick

Thank you, Jason, for sharing. And welcome to Portland.

Below, stream Urick's new video for "Ageless Isms," directed by Portland's own brilliant art freak Ashby Lee Collinson. Collinson's treatment of Urick's noise and manufactured electronic environments succeeds by building upon the music's rapid development and conclusion of motifs in a disorienting, yet sincere and thought-provoking style. It takes a rather delicate touch to balance the organic and synthetic poles of I Love You, a contrast that would surely have splintered in less capable hands. So, if you'd like to get to know Collinson (the mastermind behind Experimental Half Hour's Princess Dies) a little better, you can start by checking out her fund-worthy video project over at Kickstarter. And don't forget to attend an intimate evening with Urick this Sunday, January 22, as he headlines a night of fringe local talent at Valentine's.

• Conlon Nancarrow

On the recently re-named Sound of Young America (now known as Bullseye), host Jesse Thorn gets an enlightening bit from Dan Deacon. The way Deacon describes music is marvelous. He may never get to see a new color, Deacon says, but with music the palate and spectrum are ever expanding.

One of the artists who helped Deacon hear a new color is Conlon Nancarrow, a composer who wrote pieces that could only be performed by player piano. Conlon's righteous torrents of notes are a stunning precursor to electronic music. I never realized that the blipy and wobbly sounds we associate with computers—especially early 8-bit and 16-bit Nintendo-like synthesizers—could result from playing scales at top speed. The best example of all is embedded in the interview.

LISTEN: Dan Deacon on Bullseye with Jesse Thorn
Dan Deacon, The Song That Changed My Life by Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

All aboard!

That's right, it's the R. Kelly cruise. From the McRib-lovin' mind that brought you "Bump n' Grind," Trapped in the Closet, and urinating on underage girls, Carnival is proud to present the Love Letter Cruise, embarking next October for a five day excursion through the Bahamas. If we needed any furthur proof that Kelly is the voice of our generation, this is it.

It isn't cheap (tickets start at $1500), but the cruise features a wealth of entertainment, including a fashion show and modeling contest, mock game show, waterslide fun, and even a wellness seminar! Sounds like a great time to be had by all—let's just hope they chlorinate the fuck out of that pool (because of, you know... the pee).

All kinds of stuff been piling up. Probably a lot of it since lost. For a time, all I could think about was Cass McCombs, who I recently saw and wrote about in what might just be a bitch of a story. It'll be in print Thursday. And let me add: don't miss Thursday's show at Doug Fir. Really, you must hear "Bradley Manning" in all its live glory. Amen and hallelujah.

Let the cleansing begin:

- A$AP Rocky and his crew used Nurses' "You Lookin' Twice" as a loop for a live free-style. Which makes me wonder all the more: why the hell isn't Dracula a smash hit? Who's missing out and fucking up here? Something is screwy with the embed so WATCH IT HERE. It's tight.

- Can Noel and Liam Gallagher just become subjects of a clinical study of the ego? I don't care at all about their music but these fuckers are and have always been stunning to watch as they unravel into limey, slobbering, jagged, and sometimes radical cunts under questioning. To wit:

New York Times Magazine : Aerosmith’s Joe Perry once suggested that cocaine isn’t particularly expensive. What’s expensive are the decisions you make under its influence. Agree?

Oh, yes, yes indeed. I got a £110,000 supercar that was built for myself, and I didn’t even have a driving license. They said it would take about a year and a half to build, and I was thinking, Great, I’ll have easily learned to drive in a year and a half. Like a small dog, I completely forgot about it and started partying with supermodels, and about a year and a half later somebody delivered it to my house, and I had no idea what they were talking about.

Get the whole interview here.

- Elvis Costello is right to tell fans not to buy his new box set that the label priced at over $200.

“Unfortunately, we at www.elviscostello.com find ourselves unable to recommend this lovely item to you as the price appears to be either a misprint or a satire.”

...

“If you should really want to buy something special for your loved one at this time of seasonal giving, we can whole-heartedly recommend Ambassadors of Jazz [by] Louis Armstrong," the singer went on, pointing out that the Armstrong box set offers 10 albums for the same price as the Spinning Songbook.

He added: “Frankly, the music is vastly superior.”

"The United States has over 700 military bases on foreign soil in sovereign countries, where we have no declaration of war. (Occupation/Preoccupation) seeks to gather covers by American musicians of songs that originate from each of these places." -occupationpreoccupation.org

Brian Mumford of Dragging an Ox Through Water's ambitious new project Occupation/Preoccupation is an inspiring example of music's potential to mobilize people into political action. In protest of the hundreds of American military occupations throughout the planet, Mumford and others are actively organizing musicians to speak out against unnecessary military interventions by covering songs indigenous to those affected regions.

The newest addition to the project, "The Army Kills Its People," is contributed by Mumford himself. The lyrics call attention to the constitutional monarchy of Bahrain (which is occupied by America's 5th Naval Fleet), to whom the United States is considering the sale of $53 million of military equipment despite the regime's violent repression of the Bahraini uprising's pro-democracy politics.

"This song by Saleh Al-Durazi was recommended to me by Bahraini activist Zainab Alkhawaja as one of her father’s favorites. This cover came into being with some extremely generous translation help (beautiful, direct and heavy lyrics).

I came into contact with the Zainab when, on Saturday April 19th, 2011, Masked Bahraini security forces broke into her home and severely beat her father Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, a prominent human rights activist, before taking him away unconscious along with Zainab’s husband and brother-in-law. As has been the case with much of the activity revolving around the “Arab Spring”, Zainab broadcast the details of the events minutes after they happened via twitter. I’d begun following her updates during this ordeal, and contacted her shortly afterward. Abdulhadi Alkhawaja was recently sentenced to life imprisonment for his peaceful human rights activism by a Bahraini military court, a verdict which has sparked international outcry." -Brian Mumford

LISTEN:

Dragging an Ox Through Water - “The Army Kills Its People” (originally performed by Saleh Al-Durazi)

Those interested in getting involved can contact Mumford at occupationpreoccupation@gmail.com

You love Youtube, but having to wade through a river of shit and advertisements to get to the best vids doesn't always appeal to you. Do you ever wish that someone would just cut the fat? Well, it looks like you're not the only one. In this age of internet overload, curatorial video sites are poised to become a pretty huge thing, and there's a whole drove of them coming together at the moment. There are especially a lot focusing on music and art, but none are as consistent, well-defined, or straight up weird as Network Awesome. The network isn't constrained by any traditional rules, and its focus on broadcasting recycled TV culture and experimental films/animations in a linear format is fascinating, to say the least.

Yesterday's episode was particularly "awesome," kicking off with curator Mark Brown's 120 Megabytes, a spin on the MTV classic 120 Minutes. The segment features "visionary interactions between sound and vision" that pay tribute to the resurgent retro aesthetics of memes such as Portable Grindhouse and Computers Club. After Brown's selections came an appropriately spooky treat with the experimental (and NSFW) George Kuchar film Pagan Rhapsody, a collection of videos spotlighting magnetic tape manipulation, and a documentary on the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop. Pretty awesome, I'd say.

After the jump, you can view a smattering of my favorite videos from yesterday's broadcast.

Continue reading »

It's probably about time you got up to date with new periphery label Orange Milk Records. Last week we spotlighted their most recent release, Sean McCann's Open Resolve, and we really didn't imagine it could get any better than that. But after test-driving their stacked list of recent and upcoming releases, we were proven wrong. Good thing, too. Now you get to reap the benefits of our cherry-picking, because we're cluing you in on some of the best sounds from an experimental label that's jumped quickly (and quietly) to the front of the pack.

Click the jump to look and listen, and read what Orange Milk has to say about some of these records.

Continue reading »

Are you one of those assholes that thinks the '80s were complete shit? Have you always been into the more eccentric British songwriters of the '60s and '70s (Barrett, Hitchcock, Davies) than glammy aesthetics and cocaine? Do you not listen to anything with synthesizers "on principle"?

Get over yourself. Or, since that's not likely to happen, just check out Cleaners from Venus. This could be the your "transition band," the one that makes modern music start to sound palatable. Listen, I'm not saying Ariel Pink isn't completely full of shit. I'm just saying that once you get into this band, you pretty much stop caring about all other music for two weeks.

To be clear, this band isn't just for fence-sitters. Cleaners from Venus are absolutely one of the greatest (and least known) pop bands to come out of Britain in the 1980s. So why haven't we heard more from them? Well, bandleader Martin Newell was basically obsessed with DIY culture and self-releasing his music. After being jilted by the music industry with his former band Plod, Newell retreated and began to self-record albums "on a four track in a bedroom in shameful poverty." The reclusiveness of this approach translated into most of the Cleaners' early stuff being released in small batches of cassettes Newell dubbed in his kitchen, and they've been in heavy bootleg rotation since then. The band never knew any mainstream success, but more and more people are starting to take notice. With the reissue of Newell's Songs for... a Fallow Land earlier this year on Fixed Identity and a growing cult following in the US, it seems the band is finally poised to win over the listeners they've always deserved.

On March 13, 2012, Captured Tracks will release remastered recordings of the first three Cleaners records: Blow Away Your Troubles (1981), On Any Normal Monday (1982), and Midnight Cleaners (1982). The collection will be released on vinyl, CD, and digital, and includes bonus tracks, rare photos, and extensive liner notes.

Check out "Renee (Who's Driving Your Car?)" below, and make the time to do some reading up on your new favorite band.

LISTEN:

Cleaners from Venus - "Renee (Who's Driving Your Car?)"

Today is a good day to listen to Neil Young's On The Beach. Not that there is ever really a bad day for what is arguably the tidiest collection of Young's best work, but as the heavenly ceiling hangs roughly five feet above our stupid heads, let his grim representation of Los Angeles—that fabled, sun-bathed city we might just be entertaining visions of—offer some solace. People are still miserable when it's nice outside.

So what if there are only forty-six minutes of "daylight" remaining. So what if our Circadian rhythms are preparing to enter the gauntlet of gloom that is the next seven months. SO FREAKING WHAT.

Just listen to this; it should make you feel better, or exponentially worse.

Back in April I interviewed Das Racist for a short feature in the print edition. I remember it went poorly. The phone was passed from member to member like an unwanted chore. The whole thing felt like a hangover. Finally Ashok took over and we got to talking semi-coherently. Nonetheless, "Racist Jokes" is a story I've since become pretty unhappy with. It happens.

Comedian Hari Kondabolu took on profiling group in the latest issue of Spin. It's the cover story of the "comic issue," edited by Patton Oswalt. When it comes to sorting through Das Racist's jungle of seeming contradictions, Kondabolu is almost too perfect for the job. He's got a Masters in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and once worked as a community organizer. More importantly, he's Ashok's older brother. (I've also written about Hari. That piece I'm content with.)

Kondabolu's "These Colors Don't Run" is a marvelous portrait of modern, independent rap and social politics in America. It's funny, skeptical, and scholarly. The opening bit:

My little brother Ashok, or "Dap" as he is known and I refuse to call him, is DR's hype man. His job is to know all the lyrics to the songs and enthusiastically repeat them onstage, often while dancing, which somehow makes my occupation as a professional comedian sound stable by comparison. This is reflected in how our relatives in India describe us to curious friends and neighbors: Ashok gets transformed into a "singer" and I become a "lawyer." This is much more respectable, I suppose, than "crazy man who talks to strangers" (me) and "crazy man who yells at strangers" (Ashok).

When I was first told about my brother's job, I didn't know how to feel. Part of the confusion, I suppose, was that I hadn't bothered listening to the music, despite knowing that my brother, his best friend since high school Himanshu Suri (Heems), and Hima's Wesleyan University classmate Victor Vazquez (Kool A.D.) were performing regularly in Brooklyn and Ashok was excited about it. Part of me still sees Ashok's existence on this planet as a result of my parents not wanting me to be bored. The possibility that he could have a life and destiny unconnected to my own seemed absurd.

Then Kondabolu delves into Das Racist's contradictions:

Their lyrics are a reading, listening, and viewing list for a later time—you can dance and nod your head to the music now, but if you want the full experience, start Googling.

After reading articles about DR over the past couple of years, the question that comes up repeatedly is: "Are they joking or are they serious?" This has followed them since 2008, when their song "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" went viral. Was it simply a funny song about two friends going to the wrong fast-food restaurant, or did it say more about the state of American culture? Does the repetition in the song symbolize the Mobius-strip repetition of chains that appear throughout the country? Or something more? They officially responded in the song "hahahaha jk?" from last year's mixtape Sit Down, Man, with the chorus "We're not joking / Just joking, we are joking / Just joking, we're not joking."

Get the whole thing.

Last month Bootsy Collins showed up in the Chicago studios of Sound Opinions for what turned out to be a terrific interview. Really, it's a history lesson as seen through star-shaped rainbow sunglasses. The legendary bass playing alien is the human embodiment of funk.

Bootsy started out with his brother Catfish before being picked up by James Brown in what was actually a sly firing of the previous incarnation of the JB's. There's a lot of great stuff on James' heyday plus the nuts and bolts of funks music origins. From Brown, Bootsy finds another groundbreaking guru in George Clinton. There is a large, eclectic family aspect to the musical world Clinton has cultivated, Bootsy explains.

Asked what would be the ideal entry point to the massive catalog of Funkadelic, Parliment, and Clinton's many other projects, Bootsy takes his time, wanting to get it right. "Wow," he says in deliberation, before offering up Maggot Brain. Indeed, it's one of the great records of all time, including one of the great guitar solos ever put to tape. In case you've never heard it, or been put off by the more flighty compositions of Parliment Funkadelic, just know that Funkadelic is itself a markedly different group. They get dark and heavy along with the bevy of weirdness. It is as much a rock record as it is funky. "Super Stupid" beats punk at it's own game.

So, without further adéu, get over to Sound Opinions and lend Bootsy your ear.

Some people really hate this song. For these folks, listening to Bon Iver's "Beth/Rest" (the final track on this year's self-titled LP) is a visceral roller coaster ride through a valley of repressed memories—it prompts negative associations with certain songs, pop culture minutiae, and faint semi-dark impressions of times spent alone in high school with nothing good to listen to on the car radio. The first thing they hear is that compressed Korg M1 keyboard sound that reminds them of something like this. The song then settles into a mid-tempo ballad groove which takes them back here. And soon after—and this is the last straw—the smooth, warm '90s sitcom-sounding saxophone tucks itself right beneath Justin Vernon's echoed tenor and there's only this on their mind. It's everything that hasn't been cool for a long time—or ever.

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They also printed a photo or two of mine in this month's Do's & Don'ts.

• The original WTC 9/11 cover

Composer Steve Reich's newest release, WTC 9/11, isn't an easy listen. Performed by Kronos Quartet, and fraught with soundbites taken from Reich-conducted interviews with people affected directly by the tragedy, the record incites a range of reactions: distress, anger, avoidance, you name it. Everyone has their own way of dealing with 9/11, and on the tenth anniversary of the event, our response to these memorials is particularly relevant.

The year 2011 has seen its share of controversial album covers, and Reich's original artwork depicting the second plane about to fly into the South tower is no exception. Pulled due to a backlash from many of his supporters, some have declared this censorship an outrage, while to those offended, the illustration was taken as a personal affront.

This territory isn't unfamiliar to Reich; the man is known for taking on difficult subject matter. His 1988 piece Different Trains (also recorded with Kronos Quartet) is a simulated account of what it's like to be headed for a concentration camp on a Nazi-operated train. The weighty pathos of Reich's work is often implicit in its interlocking, sublime orchestration, but Reich's incorporation of speech on WTC 9/11 makes for an even more immersive listening experience, which is further emphasized by his own outspokenness on the subject.

"9/11 is not an isolated event. It was sort of like the signpost, you know, over the whole planet, saying, 'Here comes a whole new chapter in world history.' When I interviewed every friend and every neighbor, I asked them one question which never appears in the piece, which is: 'Do you think this could happen again, and do you think it could happen again in New York?' And everybody said, "Do I think it could happen again? It's not a question of 'if,' it's a question of 'when.'" -Reich

Regardless of the potentially intimidating subject matter, serious listening is encouraged. The entire record is streaming now at NPR.

LISTEN:

Steve Reich - "WTC 9/11: 2. 2010"

• MARANDA, CLEAN UP YOUR DAD'S HOUSE!

In case you were unaware, Janet Jackson is in town tonight. Miss Jackson (I am indeed nasty, thanks for asking) will be at the Keller Auditorium as part of her "Number Ones, Up Close & Personal" tour.

One person who wanted to get up close & personal with Janet was Maranda from Troutdale, who promised to clean her dad's house (five times!) in exchange for tickets. But that never happened, and dad took to Craigslist to vent his frustration:

MARANDA CLEAN MY F U K I N - HOUSE!! - $350 (Troutdale)

So I buy my daughter 350 dollar tickets to see Janet Jackson tonight.
She promises me to clean my house "5"times.
DOES SHE CLEAN IT ONCE??? NO
DOES SHE CLEAN IT TWICE???? NO
WOULD ANYONE LIKE A DAUGHTER????
SPOILED ROTTEN LITTLE BRAT!!!!!!
SORTA PRETTY BUT ATTITUDE TAKES CARE OF THAT REAL QUICK!!!

MAYBE JANET WILL COME CLEAN MY HOUSE!!!

Love Dad.

I hate to break it to dad, but looks like Maranda also ripped you off on the tickets. The most expensive seat on the Ticketmaster site was listed at $97.40. Then again, maybe they went to a scalper. Then again, maybe this entire post is fake, since what kind of father refers to his daughter as "sorta pretty"? Ouch.

• FRANKIE “KASH” WADDY / ART OF DRUMS

Three music articles that caught my eye in the last week. Two from our sister paper, The Stranger and on from the NY Times.

- Let's do local first. Or at least, local for the moment. As told in Dave Itzkoff's feature in yesterday's Sunday Times, Stephen Malkmus is planning to leave Portland. For "the sake of change," the Jicks' leader plans to take his family and move to Europe. Bon Voyage, you coy sonnafabitch.

True to form, Malkmus reveals little in an otherwise probing piece on the recently-released Mirror Traffic. The enigma continues. Nonetheless, it's an interesting read and a pretty complete picture of how the record took shape. Also, Itzkoff makes an intruiging suggestion: that Beck, who produced Mirror Traffic, may be positioned to become a significant and worthwhile producer in the years to come.

The best quote comes from Janet Weiss:

“I don’t think Steve Malkmus gets wildly excited about much except fantasy sports,” said Janet Weiss, the former drummer for Sleater-Kinney who performs on “Real Emotional Trash” and “Mirror Traffic. “He did invent slacker.”

- Over at The Stranger, Trent Moore has a terrific interview with Frankie "Kash" Waddy, one-time drummer for James Brown and Funkadelic. Waddy, who is promoting a series of new drum-related art, talks about his past with the legendary groups. Here he is on George Clinton's production methods with Funkadelic:

George ran (the studio) like a factory. There would be two or three rooms going, and whoever got in there first would start putting their stuff down. Whoever wanted to join in did. Some of them came out really, really good. And some were just okay. But the great ones were worth it. Funkadelic recording was like an assembly line. One group of guys would record, then there'd be another group of guys waiting in the next room to lay down their thing on top of it. We went on like that forever. And while we were in the studio, we wouldn't listen to the radio or watch TV. We didn't want to be distracted or infected by anything. We didn't want to sound like something that was already out there.

- Also at The Stranger, Larry Mizel puts into words everything I've been feeling about Watch The Throne.

Far as I can tell, the current narrative in rap (and perhaps all pop music) is all about the all-consuming desire to be famous, as that's the highest order of human experience. There is no love, no self-worth, just the fame (if you're shallow and stupid) and the money (if you're shallow and smart). In case you haven't noticed, artists parroting that mainstream party line in Seattle aren't finding a lot of success here. The folks who want to hear that kind of shit are already programmed to treat it like disposable background music. There's no real support for it here. I think, for reasons specific to our region, far more people want to hear something from the soul, something that speaks to them. (To you, that might mean that Seattle's corny, but to me, that means you're corny.) That doesn't mean you have to be like A, B, or C who might be so-called successful out here, either, you just have to—in my opinion—be speaking something real (even if you're sneaking it in) and not rap "real." Real as in something people can feel in their chest. (Keep in mind there are many types of people, too.) Life doesn't happen in the fucking club. Just about everybody smokes weed and kicks it—look, after a while, nobody cares. Flex! What else you got?

Amen Brother!

While at times repetition can become sublime, a lot of garage bands simply plod in a straight line 'cause they don't know no better. No chops or talent or thoughts to shift dynamic gears.

Cold Showers (ex-members of Mika Miko), however, could be more than a one-trick garage pony. Clearly they've got the scuzzy thump down. But then, a little deeper into "I Don't Mind" (see above), more intriguing signs appear. A woman's voice comes to offer a slight respite, then the whole thing breaks down (around 2:40). Just for a minute, but it's enough to drive up that next bump—a little jive that makes the piece whole. Hopefully the rest stands up.

Cold Showers will be at East End Tues July 26 with The Dune, 9 pm.

This week I reviewed A Little Help, the new movie from writer/director Michael Weithorn starring Jenna Fischer. It's bad. Don't see it. However, there wasn't enough room in my review to mention the cameo by Dion DiMucci, who everyone knows from "Runaround Sue" and "The Wanderer," but remains an oddly unheralded talent, undoubtedly one of the greatest vocalists to come out of the rock era. He doesn't save A Little Help, and actually his cameo—a portion of which you can watch above, if you dare—is pretty embarrassing. (Jakob Dylan performs the bulk of the soundtrack*, to the film's obvious detriment.) But seeing Dion smiling good naturedly and jamming on guitar with that goofy-haired kid made me remember how incredible he is.

After success in the early '60s, and after kicking a heroin habit that he'd nurtured since the '50s (ahead of the curve, even then), Dion had one more hit in 1968 with "Abraham, Martin and John" (here's a great clip of him performing it on the Smothers Brothers' show). Dion never really had much further success in the singles market, but he stuck around—becoming a born again Christian in the late '70s (he's since reverted to the Catholicism he grew up with)—and lent his amazing voice to a long string of records. My favorite might be 2000's Déjà Nu, which sees him revisiting the old-fashioned recording techniques he used to make his early hits. Here's an a capella cover of a Bruce Springsteen song from that record:

LISTEN:

Dion - "If I Should Fall Behind"

This is all to say that you should listen to more Dion. He's done doo-wop, folk, country, rock, blues, and more, and he's done it all well. Now he spends much of his time as a prison minister, helping incarcerated men over their drug addictions. The man's just amazing, probably the only person in the world I could actually listen to sing the proverbial phonebook. Listen to his records. But don't watch A Little Help.

*whoa, did we really just mention Jakob Dylan in two consecutive blog posts?

In honor of the four anniversary of Kurt Cobain's Dr. Martens ad (The 14 year anniversary of Sweet 75's debut album? The six month anniversary of Miley Cyrus doing "Smells Like Teen Spirit"? Why are we doing this again?), SPIN Magazine's has wrangled together a wide assortment of bands for a Nevermind tribute album.

It's about damn time we pay tribute to those scrappy guys from Seattle.

While my knee jerk reaction was to despise Newermind (ugh, Newermind) based on the lazy nostalgia of it all, it's actually a pretty decent selection of covers. With the exception of Amanda Palmer's snoozy take on "Polly" and appearances from Foxy Shazam and Midnight Juggernauts, the compilation has a varied selection of bands, many of which aren't afraid to deconstruct the original material. Surfer Blood and Titus Andronicus offer earnest and accurate takes, but Charles Bradley, Butch Walker, and (surprisingly) the Meat Puppets happily stray in their respective covers. The Bradley song ("Stay Away") is barely recognizable, evidence that Cobain just might have had a career in writing bumpin' soul songs. My personal favorite? EMA torching through a the feedback of the album's noisy closing number, "Endless, Nameless."

LISTEN

Charles Bradley & The Menahan Street Band - "Stay Away"

EMA - "Endless, Nameless"

You can download Newermind for free via Spin's Facebook page.