Grazie Alien:album di cover molto carino e per una giusta causa

Despite being written off either as well-meaning fund-raisers or product tie-ins, the various artists comp may be the ideal product for the digital age. Because it has less musical than conceptual cohesion (and sometimes neither), it plays as if on shuffle, one song by one act leading to another song by another act and making no demand on a listener’s attention greater than three or four minutes. If/When the album finally surrenders to the single as the primary product of the music industry, various artists comps– whether tribute albums, charity collections, or soundtracks– will likely continue to haunt the periphery of the industry, like ghosts of the CD age. Worth at most a listen or two, most have a few solid tracks mixed in with failed experiments or dull B-sides, but usually they’re panned as driven more by marketing or good intentions than by solid musical ideas.

A good example of possibilities of the form, the 15-track Heroes certainly benefits a good cause: War Child works globally to protect children living in war zones. On top of that, it has an intriguing organizing premise, an approach that sets it apart from others of its ilk. It’s a covers album, but rather than pick 15 contemporary artists and have them choose their songs, Heroes takes the opposite tack: The producers asked older artists to pick younger artists to cover their songs. Bob Dylan picked Beck, and wise choice: He turns “Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat” into a Guero stomp– part T. Rex glam, part Spike Jones noise fest, and nearly unrecognizable from the original. U2 commission Elbow to cover “Running to Stand Still”, one of the few Joshua Tree tracks that doesn’t have U2 stamped all over it. The cover moves more slowly, but with a more psychedelic goal as the band stretch out the coda until it nearly stands still.

There are, almost out of obligation, some unimaginative pairings. The Kinks’ “Victoria” gets covered by the Kooks, which means it’s pretty much the same song, and of course Iggy Pop hires former duet partner Peaches to go down on “Search & Destroy”, which sounds no better, no worse, and no different than you’d imagine. But obvious choices don’t always breed obvious results. Estelle turns in what sounds at first like a pretty straight cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”. It’s not much of a stretch, but she starts scat-singing the horn line, threads in some wakkachikka guitar, and gives her version its own character.

Other pairings are much less obvious and either more satisfying or more puzzling. Duffy transforms Wings’ “Live and Let Die” into a smoky soul number about the curdling of youthful idealism, opting for seductive rather than ominous or threatening. She even corrects Paul McCartney’s infamous grammatical gaffe (“this ever-changing world which we live in,” she sings with a copyeditor’s eye), but I wish she didn’t mewl over her consonants: Crisper enunciation might have turned a novelty into a solid reimagining. Rufus Wainwright has better luck choreographing Brian Wilson’s “Wonderful” and “Song for Children” into a charming, droll stage medley, complete with muted trumpets and skipping piano. On their airy cover of “Transmission”, Hot Chip hang Christmas lights and steel drums on the gloomy despair of the original, no doubt pissing off a lot of Joy Division fans in the process. However, because Alexis Taylor can sound simultaneously downcast and upbeat, this cover retains a kernel of melancholy angst.

Other acts on Heroes play a game of what if, exhibiting a deep and playful knowledge of their subjects’ histories. What if Bowie had flown west instead of east and recorded in New York rather than Berlin? He might have come up with a version of “Heroes” as busy and flightless as TV on the Radio’s? What if Sheena herself sang “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker”? It’d no doubt sound like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ cover, which is infectious (“What is she, Joey??!!” Karen O shouts) despite never veering too far from the original. And what if Springsteen had turned those Nebraska demos into an E Street Band album? What if Clarence Clemons had played sax and Roy Bittan had played piano on the central riff of “Atlantic City”? The Hold Steady may seem like an obvious choice to cover the Boss, but that mantra– “Everything dies, that’s a fact / Maybe everything that does some day comes back”– converges nicely with the Catholic imagery ofSeparation Sunday. And that’s the point of V/A comps like this– well, beyond the pint of raising money and awareness for a worthy cause. It’s about hearing your favorite acts in new contexts and discovering new currents of influence between the veterans and the rookies.