(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)
Artist: Rachel Zeffira Album Title: The deserters Year released: 2012 Details: Black vinyl, poster, included 7″ single “Here on in” b/w “To here knows when”
The skinny: With The Horrors’ Faris Badwan, Rachel Zeffira makes up the other half of Cat’s Eyes, but here she strikes out on her own with her solo debut. Mixing her classical and operatic training with dream pop makes for some haunting and beautiful music: a little Kate Bush, a little Cocteau Twins.
(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)
Artist: Basia Bulat Album Title: Good advice Year released: 2016 Details: Black vinyl, gatefold
The skinny: Basia Bulat’s fourth album takes the diminutive but massive-voiced, Canadian singer/songwriter into a whole new territory. Produced by My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, “Good advice” goes beyond the usual auto-harp or acoustic guitar backdrop for her vocal exercises and gives her a massive, rainbow coloured canvas to leap off of. It’s easily my favourite of her albums to date.
As I understand it, the story goes something like this. Woody Guthrie’s daughter, Nora, approached Britain’s modern equivalent, Billy Bragg, after seeing him perform at a Woody Guthrie tribute concert with the proposition of bringing some of her father’s unrecorded compositions to life. Bragg agreed, but not before enlisting the help of American indie folk/rock group, Wilco. The extraordinary and perhaps a bit surprising results were recorded and released as 1998’s Grammy-nominated album, “Mermaid avenue”. In fact, it was so successful that a second volume was released two years later, followed by a three volume box set that included outtakes in 2012.
This song, “Way over yonder in the minor key”, is a bit unique on this list of covers series in that we don’t have an original recording to which to compare it. Apparently, when Woody Guthrie died, he left behind manuscripts containing the lyrics to over a thousand songs but because he never read or wrote music, we’ll never know for sure how these were really meant to sound. Yet without a solid guide, I think Billy Bragg has done a fine job here, keeping to Guthrie’s spirit but adding his own personal touch. It’s simply strummed on his acoustic guitar and sung in his inimitable and working class accented vocals. He’s enlisted Wilco’s Jay Bennet to lay down a lovely Hammond B-3 backbone, some Eliza McCarthy fiddles, and of course, Natalie Merchant’s lovely backing vocal track.
“Way over yonder” is one of the lesser politically-charged of Guthrie’s tunes and is not overtly making social commentary but perhaps is more personal. It’s light and jocular, calling to mind a simpler time. Childhood. And all of those childhood teasing games.
“She said it’s hard for me to see
How one little boy got so ugly
Yes, my luttle girly, that might be
But there ain’t nobody that can sing like me”
The cover:
For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.
My (life in) music lists 