Find a Various - Score! 20 Years Of Merge Records: The Covers! First pressing or reissue. Complete your Various collection. Shop Vinyl and CDs. ![]() Merge Records doesn't look its age. Originally formed as an outlet for Superchunk material, the Durham, N.C.-based label has grown into an indie institution, but only gradually-- year by year, release by release. It never allied itself with a scene or a sound, so the mind doesn't automatically tether it to a specific place or time, the way Sub Pop, despite its strong roster this decade, will be most closely associated with Seattle in the late 1980s and early 90s. So it's hard to believe Merge is already 20 years old, an occasion the label is marking with a big birthday bash-- the five-day XX Merge fest in July-- and a subscription-only series of commemorative retrospectives and remixes. Perhaps the most intriguing party favor is Score! Twenty Years of Merge Records: The Covers, a choppy but oddly endearing compilation that enlists 20 non-Merge acts to cover Merge songs. Doesn't resemble a traditional label sampler as much as one of those carefully curated compilations like this year's Dark Was the Night. Both releases benefit charities, both feature the National at their most subdued, and both serve as a useful state-of-indie report. Alawar full activator. But where Dark emphasized 'primarily folkie tunefulness, baroque lines in which the guitar is subservient to other instruments' (as Scott Plagenhoef wrote in his review), Score! Allows and even encourages these artists to indulge every idiosyncrasy, no matter how potentially off-putting or digressive. The result is a weirder, less polite album, one that showcases a diversity of musical styles and seems much more representative of 2000s indie. More representative, however, doesn't mean better. Tamil books online free. This comp's inclusive cross-section comes with a downside: If there's something for everyone, there's also something for everyone to skip over. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists' workmanlike cover of Robert Pollard's 'The Numbered Head' will likely get played often (at least those opening chords), as listeners move past the Hive Dwellers' discursive take on Superchunk's 'My Noise', which pares the song down to scattered drum hits, a meandering melodica, stair-stepping bass, and floating vocals. It's interesting to hear the Merge founders stretched out like taffy, but it's interesting only once. Conor Oberst's earnestness gets the better of him on Bright Eyes' version of the Magnetic Fields' 'Papa Was a Rodeo', which takes the song at face value and misses its meta-country-song ironies. Stephin Merritt demands a more complex approach with shades of feeling rather than primary colors, and unfortunately Jens Lekman and Tracey Thorn also learn that the hard way on 'Yeah! Communicating only sincere resignation to the neglect of lust, mischief, and desperation. Who'd have thought Merritt would prove so difficult to cover? And who'd have thought Chris Lopez would be so easy? He gets two testimonials here, one from the much-misses Rock ateens and another from Tenement Halls. The New Pornographers streamline the Teens' 'Don't Destroy This Night' and reinforce that central snaky riff, while the Shins put floaties on the Halls' 'Plenty Is Never Enough', making its shuffle all the more buoyant. Similarly, East River Pipe gets a pair of songs: Okkervil River chop and screw 'All You Little Suckers' to little effect, but the Mountain Goats make the otherwise humdrum 'Drug Life' into a rotting-flesh acoustic lament, emphasizing the melody's similarities to Frankie Valli's 'Let's Hang On' as a darkly ironic gesture. Of course Superchunk get the most covers-- four in total, all with varying degrees of success. After the Hive Dwellers, Death Cab for Cutie find new kicks in 'Kicked In' thanks to a murkier, more emphatic sound that suits them well, and Ryan Adams preserves the drama of 'Like a Fool', although it sounds like he could be covering Echo & the Bunnymen here.
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