Friday, November 18, 2011

J Tillman "Tonight's The Night" (2010)



This seems to be a fairly recent trend -- artists doing cover versions of much loved albums, start to finish, with track order intact.  I suppose that it's a fairly logical extension of the tribute album concept that has been an ongoing trend since at least the 1950s (Nashville must have had some sort of local ordnance -- it seems that every singer had an album released called "Sings Hank Williams" or something like that.)

In all honesty, I'm not really sure what I think of the trend.  I like covers as much or more than the next guy.  But the entire album?  I've yet to hear such a project that seemed to add anything to the original material.

If you are going to go this route, this seems the way to go.  Internet only, released for free to your fans.  That's not so different from Phish's Halloween tradition of covering entire albums in the middle of their concerts.  And that's a fun tradition.

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