They made a Believer out of me

They made a Believer out of me

Last year I spent an unusually large amount of cash buying The Believer Magazine's music compilation and a funky Charles Burns t-shirt. I don't claim to understand the weird wonderful world of publishing giant, Timothy McSweeny (giant? I think I meant gnat, no? umm…cipher? Broadly based media concern?), but I was sucked into their beautifully designed, illustrated and written magazine, The Believer, then their quarterly publication Issue 13 edited by Chris Ware and finally, their DVD magazine Wholpin, Issue 1. Their music compilation of last year was an ode to cover tunes (this year's issue celebrated "live recordings"). This isn't like any other covers album you've ever heard. It's not Sid Vicious singing/yelling "My Way" or Johnny Cash doing Nine Inch Nails (though it is closer to that). This is a collection of hardly known acts covering hardly known tunes of their contemporaries. You've got Jim Gutherie (ok, he sang that annoying "Hands in my Pocket" tune - but he's much better here) covering the Constantines and the Constantines covering Elevator to Hell, and The Mountain Goats covering the Silver Jews.

Now you can listen to and download the entire playlist from this blog, called SixEyes, just scroll down until you see "Under the Indie Covers. So, get before you get got, I say.

By the way, it was this Believer CD that opened my eyes to Wolf Parade and that there might be more to them than that sort of drunken intensity I was familiar with.
listen to this fine fine cover of Frog Eyes' "Claxxon's Lament" by Montreal's Wolf Parade...


I hope you discover something you like. By the way, if you can't seem to play the tunes or don't even see the little "Audio" icon ()then you either need to allow javascript in your Web browser or update your Flash Player Plug-in.

Enjoy,
Peter