Acquired Tastes: A.V. Club Features

The A.V. Club has an interesting feature entitled Inventory: 14 cover songs that are better than the originals. While most of their examples might seem unfamiliar (at least to these ears), their recommendations are generally well-thought of, and the comments posted by the A.V. Club readers provide an excellent source for referrals. Here are some choice recommendations from both the A.V. Club authors and some readers.

From A.V. Club:

The Mountain Goats, "The Sign"

Though he doesn't play it any more, Mountain Goats leader John Darnielle turned his interpretation of Ace Of Base's cheesy mid-'90s hit into one of the best covers ever performed onstage. There's a relatively straight version of it—with the programming replaced by an acoustic guitar, of course—on the Songs For Peter Hughes seven-inch (which was later included on the Bitter Melon Farm compilation), but when Darnielle played it live, he'd pepper it with the Swedish band's backstory. The result was beautifully hilarious, and not just because he could get a club full of hip indie kids to enthusiastically sing along to the chorus. Though Darnielle starts off the recorded version by saying "I never get tired of this song," he eventually eliminated it from his set list because, as he recently explained, "It sort of seemed like every indie band in the world had some pop staple they played for laughs. I really loved 'The Sign,' thought it was an awesome song, [and] didn't want anything to do with anything that might resemble liking something ironically."

From reader (come on), 5:12 PM Mon March 12, 2007:

all along the watchtower

by come on


i was really disappointed (but not particularly) surprised to see hendrix's "all along the watchtower" on this list. "searing and eerie" is an apt enough description of the dylan original, and i suppose the hendrix version is more "epic" but i don't think that makes it better.

"all along the watchtower" is a disquieting, apocalyptic song, but hendrix doesn't really seem attentive to that in his version. he turns it into a fist-pumping anthem, and it sounds like it doesn't really matter what words he's singing. his version may be louder and noisier, but dylan's is actually *scary*.

the truth is that however many people try, nobody does dylan better than dylan. there are plenty of serviceable dylan covers, but most of them tend to miss something about the original. dylan, despite all the knocks against his voice, was a great singer--for the simple reason that he always sounded like he *meant* it.

this, i think, is the real secret to great covers. this list's most glaring failure is the absence of any covers by johnny cash, and cash sang great covers because, like dylan, he always meant what he sang.

the best covers, though, find something in the song that nobody else knew was there to begin with, and cash did this better than anyone else, i think. U2's original version of "one" is intolerably preachy and overdramatic, but cash's graceful understatement make it deeply affecting. or, to take a different kind of example, look at the cover of "thunder road" bonnie prince billy did with tortoise. their version of the song is on a completely different emotional register than springsteen's, but it also sounds like something they found in the song itself.

All in all, a pretty good thread, and one that provided many new leads for me to download on Frostwire. While I don't have the time, really, to sift through all the reader suggestions, I would welcome the efforts of people who would (hint, hint).

Any other great covers out there?

Picture of Ace of Base comes courtesy of Jerzbear.
Picture of Johnny Cash comes courtesy by way of Amazon.