Brave And The Bold, The

Lo-Fi melancholy americana vs. Math-rock/Kraut-rock. These are all covers, performed by Will Oldham aka Bonnie 'Prince' Billy aka Superwolf with Tortoise as his backing band. Occasional female backing vox. None of these covers are amazing, and the Minutemen one makes me long for the original. A few are interesting. Most are gloomy, wistful, bittersweet (allmusic's descriptions of Oldham's "moods"). Tortoise doesn't have a lot of sonic room to move in these songs, since they need to conform to standard pop-song structure. The somewhat upbeat songs (1, 5, 7) are the my favorites. 2 is a good choice for being recognizable, but does suck the life out of the song. Picks: 1, 5, 7, 9. FCC Clean -Wicked Child

***01. (orig: Milton Nascimento) Bouncy tropicalia filtered through math-rock. Banging, driving. Nearhappy vibe. Portugese lyrics. (3:09)
*02. (orig: Bruce Springsteen) Vox sounds like Dave Matthews. Depressing, defeating take on the original, no anger in it. The theremin and bass noodling from Tortoise are good. (6:28)
03. (orig: the Minutemen) Math-rock, lots of guitar feedback. Fake-out ending @ 1:30. Mostly instrumental. Country-crooner vox. (3:21)
04. (orig: Elton John) Vox are heavily echoed and clipped, has that "radio transmission from another planet" feel. Reminds me of slow-jam Broken Social Scene -- droning repetitive guitar & snare. (4:59)
***05. (orig: Lungfish) Krautrock instrumentation, great vox. Matches really well. (3:31)
06. (orig: Don Williams) Slow, subdued. Lots of glock, female accompaniment. Lullabye-ish. (3:13)
**07. (orig: Devo) Fuzzed guitars, drum-machine sound, lots of cymbal crashes, vox buried low in the mix. (2:41)
08. (orig: Melanie) Slow dirge. Gloomy, minimal instrumentation. Clean vox. (3:33)
**09. (orig: Richard Thompson) Clean guitar math-rock, has some intstrumental breaks. Slow, spacey Tortoise is dominant, but vocals work well. (5:08)
10. (orig: Quix*o*tic) Starts dirgey, brings in interesting dissonant guitars, banjo. Feels like it should crescendo, but doesn't. (3:41)