It’s not often you get to hear bands covering other relevant bands' songs within the underground Punk Rock scene. It’s even more rare to hear those covers on an actual release. Not since The Switcheroo Series: Alexisonfire vs. Moneen (2005), and the Swiss Army Bromance (2010) limited 7-inch featuring Dashboard Confessional and New Found Glory, have I found a solid cover release. Those days are over.
With the Glamour Kills Spring 2012 tour currently hitting all major markets in North America, the dudes at Glamour Kills have put together something very special. The tour features some of the biggest acts in the current Pop Punk/Punk Rock movement and teamed up with Glamour Kills they have released a limited edition LP compilation featuring all six bands covering another band on the tour. I picked the album up at the sold out Toronto, ON date and was pleasantly surprised with the outcome.
The first track is The Wonder Years covering Anchor by Into It. Over It. The Wonder Years picked a song that was originally just one acoustic guitar and one vocal track but successfully turned it into a full band epic, adding three electric guitars, piano, bass, drums and backup vocals. I admire the song choice in that they could have picked a full band track off of Proper, which would have been closer to their style, but they took a chance and made the song their own.
On the other hand, Evan Weiss from Into It. Over It. covered Don’t Let Me Cave In, one of my personal favourites from The Wonder Years' latest LP Suburbia I’ve Given You All And Now I’m Nothing. Evan did the exact opposite on this one and took a full band song, reduced it to one guitar, and one vocal track, and to no surprise it turned out beautifully. The guitar is played through a delay/distortion pedal and along with Evan’s quiet, peaceful vocal style; it makes for a familiar Into It. Over It. tune.
The next set of covers on the album is Polar Bear Club and Transit. Polar Bear Club, being veterans of the genre, pull out all the stops on their cover of Transit’s Skipping Stone, and certainly present the strongest track on the album in my opinion. Tracking the song full band opposed to the original acoustic version really gives the song character and brings out the classic PBC sound. This is the only song on the album with which I feel the cover is better than the original. The fact that Transit played this song in a full band arrangement live on the GK tour makes me wonder if they took influence after hearing the PBC version.
By contrast, I was really disappointed in Transit’s rendition of PBC’s Resent And Resistance. Although it is a good cover, they really didn’t bring any of their own flavour to the table. Besides maybe having two vocalists and a change in key, Transit plays it safe and doesn’t really change the original song at all. I also think that they could have picked a better track that suited their style more such as Hollow Place or Another Night In the Rock, off of PBC’s Sometimes Things Just Disappear.
The third and final set of covers on the comp is The Story So Far covering A Loss For Words’ Wrightsville Beach and AL4W covering TSSF’s Quicksand. Each track is the strongest off of both respective bands’ most recent full lengths and both do a decent job in covering each other. A Loss For Words’ rendition of Quicksand is pretty cool for the first thirty seconds with a catchy drumbeat on the toms and singer Matt Arsenault playing around with different vocal melodies. However once the thirty second point hits and they change the pre-chorus and even cut out some lyrics they totally lost me. The band then proceed into the chorus with a boring closed high hat drumbeat that does not give credit to the magnitude of this chorus. The rest of the song just proves to be a dumbed down version of the original song. I do give AL4W credit though where credit is due. They picked a very hard song to cover, and managed to put their own spin on it. Kudos.
In another light The Story So Far take the cake for originality on this comp with their version of AL4W’s Wrightsville Beach. The band took my favourite AL4W song and turned it into something completely different. Instead of following the chord progressions, vocal melodies, and song structure of the original they went in the opposite direction and made Wrightsville Beach a straight up hardcore song, and a pretty good one at that. Being a huge fan of the genre I really appreciate what they did with this song. With booming drums, well written riffs, and different styles of growls, screams, and yells coming from every direction, you can tell the dudes in TSSF are big fans of hardcore music and know it well. The only downside to this cover is that I feel TSSF are perfectly suited for the original composition of Wrightsville Beach and would have killed it in typical Pop Punk fashion. However they made it more interesting by changing up the arrangement and style, and writing an overall solid Hardcore song.
All in all this compilation record is a real treat to anyone who loves and appreciates Punk Rock music. All the bands did a great job in covering each other and with a few exceptions this is a great record. The only changes I would make to this comp would be to have The Wonder Years cover The Story So Far and vice versa, and also to have Transit and Into It. Over It. cover each other, but you can’t always get what you want and this album is great nonetheless. If you are planning on going to any date on the GK tour I recommend picking up a copy of this 12-inch as it is a one-time thing and won’t be repressed. Support Punk Rock.
Rating:
Written by Andrew Eichinger
The Wonder Years
Polar Bear Club
Transit
The Story So Far
A Loss For Words
Into It. Over It.
