Ben Gibbard – “The Concept” (Teenage Fanclub Cover)
Ben Gibbard is the latest artist to take a crack at Turntable Kitchen’s full-length album cover series Sounds Delicious. (Previous participants include Mutual Benefit, Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, and Yumi Zouma.) The Death Cab For Cutie frontman is covering Teenage Fanclub’s 1991 album Bandwagonesque, and the first song he’s sharing from his album-length collection is his take on the six-minute-long “The Concept.” Gibbard stretches it a bit beyond that length, and goes a little softer, but otherwise stays pretty faithful to the original.
“Turntable Kitchen approached me last summer about being part of their Sounds Delicious Vinyl series and I was excited about the idea of covering an album in its entirety,” Gibbard says in a press release. “Bandwagonesque is my favorite record by my favorite band of all time. It came along at a pivotal time in my musical life and I’ve loved it for over 25 years. It’s been such a blast taking these songs apart to see how they work and then putting them back together again.”
Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake is also happy with the result: “I was thrilled and extremely flattered when I heard that Ben Gibbard had decided to cover Bandwagonesque in its entirety. Needless to say that the reimagining of the album by this very talented fella is both inventive and deftly executed. Thanks Ben.”
Listen via NPR below.
Ben Gibbard’s full-length cover of Bandwagonesque is out on 7/28. Details here.