Pitchfork:

Pick your interpretation: view cover bands as shaky, budding novelists, tugging Hemingway tomes down from library shelves and re-copying whole paragraphs in their own wobbly hands, desperate to make the prose seem more accessible, more indigenous, more possible. Or see them as liberators, granting dusty, half-functional songs a contemporary glow, revising and updating and bestowing precious relevance, digging through the past for muddy, uncut gems. Or understand them as stubbornly embryonic garage trios that just didn't feel like writing anymore of their own stuff last weekend, proudly rolling out Zeppelin tracks and Radiohead B-sides and sixteen stupid, confounded versions of "All Along The Watchtower". But, however you choose to interpret these bands, do not deride the cover song: yes, they can be underwhelming and lazily executed, but mediocrity is not inherent to the form.

On the smugly titled Songs We Should Have Written, ever-clever NYC ensemble Firewater sponge brilliant songs from brilliant songwriters (Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black", Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues", Tom Waits' "Diamonds and Gold", The Beatles' "Hey Bulldog"), and crib other cuts originally written specifically for non-songwriters (the mostly spoken "Is That All There Is?", immortalized by Peggy Lee, or "Some Velvet Morning", long owned by Nancy Sinatra). The band's approach is classic admiration-marred-by-envy: most of these versions are instantly recognizable, despite being slowed down, sped up, or re-arranged, and Firewater's renditions are faithful, if a little caustic-- re-imagined but not always more convincing.

As a band, Firewater consists of musicians who, generally, are better known for their previous projects: former Cop Shoot Cop bassist Tod Ashley leads the collective, which has, at various points, also featured Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion multi-instrumentalist Kurt Hoffman, and E.......
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Album formacji Toda A z 2004 roku. Tym razem Firewater wziął się za covery! A wśród nich Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits i The Beatles.

Pitchfork:

Pick your interpretation: view cover bands as shaky, budding novelists, tugging Hemingway tomes down from library shelves and re-copying whole paragraphs in their own wobbly hands, desperate to make the prose seem more accessible, more indigenous, more possible. Or see them as liberators, granting dusty, half-functional songs a contemporary glow, revising and updating and bestowing precious relevance, digging through the past for muddy, uncut gems. Or understand them as stubbornly embryonic garage trios that just didn't feel like writing anymore of their own stuff last weekend, proudly rolling out Zeppelin tracks and Radiohead B-sides and sixteen stupid, confounded versions of "All Along The Watchtower". But, however you choose to interpret these bands, do not deride the cover song: yes, they can be underwhelming and lazily executed, but mediocrity is not inherent to the form.

On the smugly titled Songs We Should Have Written, ever-clever NYC ensemble Firewater sponge brilliant songs from brilliant songwriters (Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black", Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues", Tom Waits' "Diamonds and Gold", The Beatles' "Hey Bulldog"), and crib other cuts originally written specifically for non-songwriters (the mostly spoken "Is That All There Is?", immortalized by Peggy Lee, or "Some Velvet Morning", long owned by Nancy Sinatra). The band's approach is classic admiration-marred-by-envy: most of these versions are instantly recognizable, despite being slowed down, sped up, or re-arranged, and Firewater's renditions are faithful, if a little caustic-- re-imagined but not always more convincing.

As a band, Firewater consists of musicians who, generally, are better known for their previous projects: former Cop Shoot Cop bassist Tod Ashley leads the colle.......
more