6/3/2023 0 Comments The velvet underground albumsAlso excellent is Courtney Barnett’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” which seems darker than the Velvets’ original.Īmong the other likable covers here are “I’m Waiting for the Man,” performed by the Nationals’ Matt Berninger Sharon Van Etten’s slow-paced, dreamlike “Femme Fatale,” which features beautifully arranged strings (violin, viola, and cello) Kurt Vile & the Violators’ “Run Run Run,” a seven-minute number that rocks as hard as the original “Heroin,” by Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore King Princess’s reading of “There She Goes Again” “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” by the Irish band Fontaines D.C. (Stipe’s group previously covered three Velvets songs on their 1981 album Dead Letter Office.) But Andrew Bird and Lucius’s take on Reed’s “Venus in Furs” is terrific, too, with its plucked guitar strings and foreboding violins. If one had to pick a favorite track, it might be the lead-off number, an otherworldly reading of Reed and John Cale’s ominous “Sunday Morning” by R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe that opens with clarinet rather than the original version’s celeste. Rather than simply offer an affectionate nod to the Velvets’ captivating recordings, the best of these covers put a fresh spin on them while remaining true to their spirit. Called I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground and Nico, the 55-minute CD presents renditions of all the songs from the group’s debut LP in the order they originally appeared. Hal Willner (who collaborated on several occasions with the Velvets’ Lou Reed and whose projects included the excellent Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill) produced the covers collection shortly before his Covid-related death in April 2020. The latest crop includes a fascinating documentary about the band from director Todd Haynes, a soundtrack album from that film, and a CD of cover versions of their songs. It’s not surprising, then, that around 50 years later, the group still has a devoted and growing fan club or that Velvets-related material continues to appear. An often-quoted line, generally attributed to Brian Eno, is that their first LP sold only 30,000 copies but everyone who bought it formed a band. Yet they made some of rock’s best, most innovative, and most influential music. The Velvet Underground broke up about half a century ago, having never had anything close to a hit album or single. Music Reviews: Velvet Underground Tribute & Soundtrack Albums, plus Johnny Cash
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