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June 30, 2006

Grant-Lee Phillips Loves The '80s

Over at Grant-Lee Phillips' MySpace you can hear the singer/songwriter reimagine PFurs' "Love My Way" as a downtempo folk tune. It's from his new concept album -- the concept being covering Scott Stereogum's favorite "left of the dial" '80s hits.

Grant-Lee Phillips nineteeneighties
1. "Wave Of Mutilation" (Pixies)
2. "Age Of Consent" (New Order)
3. "The Eternal" (Joy Division)
4. "I Often Dream Of Trains" (Robyn Hitchcock)
5. "The Killing Moon" (Echo & The Bunnymen)
6. "Love My Way" (Psychedelic Furs)
7. "Under The Milky Way" (The Church)
8. "City Of Refuge" (Nick Cave)
9. "So. Central Rain" (R.E.M.)
10. "Boys Don't Cry" (The Cure)
11. "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Love Me" (The Smiths)
An MP3 of the Pixies tune is at Captain's Dead, Cure and Cave are at In House Radio. Nice to hear someone do something a little different with "Boys Don't Cry." (In this case, toy piano.)

Stream the whole thing at AOL Music. (Link via Whitney.)

"This album is my personal mix tape, just as it's reeled around in my head for decades," Grant-Lee promises. In stores now! Amazon | iTunes

Posted at 10:55 AM
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15 Comments

The Pixies and New Order covers are good, but the rest seems kind of obvious and superfluous. "South Central Rain" and "Under the Milky Way" are already pretty close to GLP's sound. But I like Grant a lot and hope this gets him some money from being played in bookstores and coffee shops everywhere.

Posted by: bill p at 06/30/06 11:32 AM | Reply
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people, people...can we leave the 1980's alone, aleady? and these cover songs...holy crap

Posted by: booboo at 06/30/06 11:41 AM | Reply
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People guffaw at the oldies covers that Rod Stewart has done three times, but this really isn't any different, just hipper. I'm going to have to pass on this and pretend it never happened. (Just like I've tried to pretend the Sweet/Hoffs covers album never happened.)

Posted by: Glenn at 06/30/06 12:13 PM | Reply
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How can you hate on an album like this? These are songs that don't ever get covered; classic songs! If you don't like GLP, or if you don't like covers projects, fine. But frankly, I'm glad someone has transcended the pathology of boomer-culture worship and recorded a cover of something other than the mf beatles.

Posted by: Matt at 06/30/06 12:45 PM | Reply
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"This album is my personal mix tape, just as it's reeled around in my head for decades"

Apparently, it's reeled around very verrrry slowly. These tunes are lullabyes. So slow. Nothing wrong with that. The man has good taste.

Posted by: David at 06/30/06 1:55 PM | Reply
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Horrible.

Grant Lee Bunghole sucks.

Posted by: Tony G at 06/30/06 2:10 PM | Reply
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Granted (no pun intended), covers albums are so tired--and so often mere contract-fulfillers. But I think this is quite good. Genuinely interesting song selection, engaging versions. The New Order cover is fkng superb.

Posted by: crittick at 06/30/06 3:39 PM | Reply
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I love GLP and this album is great. I've been listening to it for a few weeks now and it's well worth owning just for the cover of "The Killing Moon."

Posted by: Tim at 06/30/06 7:37 PM | Reply
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I sat down with a guitar the other day and tried to figure out how to do a acoustic version of Wave of Mutilation. I was spectacularly unsuccessful, whereas GLB is somewhat successful. However, my favorite cover of this song was done by this dude doing covers of Pixies songs as if he were different celebrities. Yeah, sounds like a stupid idea, but his "Wave of Mutilation by the Bee Gees" is really quite awesome. You can download it here: http://pottymouth.org/mcpt/

Posted by: Joey Headset at 06/30/06 10:13 PM | Reply
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Wow, most of those songs are pretty good

http://www.musictimes.com.au

Posted by: Music Times at 06/30/06 10:50 PM | Reply
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I downloaded it a few days ago. The covers are slower than I was expecting. After 3 or 4 listens it kept getting better though. In the So. Central Rain cover there is some guitar from "Drive" throw in at the beginning- sounds cool.

Posted by: jb at 07/01/06 11:27 AM | Reply
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Someone needs to do a Joy Division cover song counter for the years 2004-2006.

Posted by: Courtney at 07/01/06 6:30 PM | Reply
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here is the full grant lee phillips cover of the smiths
http://www.npr.org/dmg/dmg.php?mediaURL=/sotd/20060628_sotd_lastnight&mediaType=RM

Posted by: stefan-boltzmann at 07/03/06 8:49 PM | Reply
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I haven't listened to it yet, but speaking honestly, i think that it doesn't matter (with all cover albums, by anybody, most of the time) whether it's a good or original album, as it is mainly a project for the artist him/herself...
well, that's my opinion

Posted by: Guido at 07/05/06 1:44 AM | Reply
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London-born rapper Sway is to be honoured at the BET Hip-Hop awards in the US...

Posted by: Steven Robbins at 11/12/06 11:01 AM | Reply
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