15 Covers! (Stop Us If You've Heard This O - The Wildhearts)

Member Name: sparksteroid

Product:	Stop Us If You've Heard This O - The Wildhearts
Date:	03/09/08 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Transformations from bad songs into good songs!

Disadvantages: All covers, some good, some bad

For those of you that don't know, The Wildhearts made a fantastic comeback in 2007 with their self-titled album, The Wildhearts, which was probably the best album they have produced in their (approximately) twenty year career. The album had a great fresh new sound and was made up of several classic tracks.

They have followed this up with Stop Us If You've Heard This One Before Vol. 1. This indicates that there could be a Vol. 2 in the future! The album is made up of fifteen cover songs from the band's favourite artists and was released on 19th May 2008. While the album contains no original songs by the band themselves, they have taken some pretty bad songs and turned them into rock classics quite impressively.

The two tracks that stand out the most for me are the amazing transformation of Warren Zevon's Carmelita, which sounds much better as a heavy rock song than it does as a vocal country track - very impressive, and Understanding Jane, which is really catchy.

The album does contain a few classics from the past such as Unsung by Helmet, which is a classic track in it's own right and Battleship Chains by Georgia Satellites. While not all these tracks are particularly of The Wildhearts usual standard, there are a select few tracks which make the album worth listening to. These are Understanding Jane (The Icicle Works), The World Comes Tumblin' (The Distillers), Unsung (Helmet), Ice Hockey Hair (Super Furry Animals), Rocket 69 (Lee Harvey Oswald Band), Rearrange You (Baby Chaos) and Carmelita (Warren Zevon).

It is quite an exciting concept overall and one which The Wildhearts have done well, though there are no original killer riffs and not the usual kick-ass attitude that you would expect from them. Still, a decent enough album all in all.

Summary: An exciting idea and one which the band have done well.