TORTOISE & BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY | The Brave and the Bold (Overcoat)
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Oldham is more a songwriter than a stylist, and would’ve been up a creek back when all most popular singers did was interpret other people’s material. His undoing of Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” makes you wish he’d left well enough alone–he sounds like he’s reading the lyrics off a paper plate, singing about a savior rising from the streets the way you might sing about sandwiches or cabinetry. (Tortoise lays down a neat boogie underneath, though, so overall it’s a draw.) With “It’s Expected I’m Gone” the boys break the punk commandment of Thou Shalt Not Cover the Minutemen, turning the tune into a distorted stew of lead-footed, impatient-sounding stoner rock–the kind of shit that feels amazing to play when you’re high on your own masterful riffing abilities and jamming at the end of band practice. It’s hard to begrudge them for putting it to tape.
One spot where Oldham and Tortoise do justice is on their rendition of “Daniel,” an Elton John ballad of much sap and tenderness that they strip of its 70s theatricality and transform into a loping electro-dub meditation. Despite his limited vocal range, Oldham gets to the marrow of the song in a way that Elton never did with his tremulous, emotive sighs; laboring over overdriven drone, he sings in a burr that always gives out on him just before he reaches the high notes. And the versions of Richard Thompson’s “Calvary Cross,” Lungfish’s “Love Is Love,” and Ronaldo Bastos and Milton Nascimento’s “Cravo e Canela” are assertive and confident–instead of a two-headed side project doing covers, Oldham and Tortoise sound like a real band getting comfortable within the skin of their own songs. –Jessica Hopper
One of the most appealing aspects of the result is its lively, almost ferocious, dismissal of genre limitations. The music is a cacophony of metal, hardcore, jazz, cabaret, and ethnic styles from Indian to African to Australian aboriginal, augmented by multiple guest vocalists, organ, didgeridoo, and saxophone (from Yakuza’s Bruce Lamont). The tracks are segments more than songs–23 of them hustle past in less than 33 minutes, sometimes jumping from genre to genre, sometimes fusing two or three into a strange chimera.
On Southernunderground’s “Old School,” the core duo of Kno and Deacon the Villain reimagined historical figures from Jesus to Einstein as hip-hop hooligans (“When lightnin’ struck Ben Frank’s kite and sent currents through / He was the first to electric boogaloo”), but there’s no such silliness on the new disc. Of all the MCs in the group, Kno was the best at goofing off, his good-natured clownishness his biggest strength–but he contributes only a single verse to A Piece of Strange.
