It's been 1 year on Substack (more or less)! I made this EP of covers to celebrate. It is called 'The Shape Of Things'! It's for you!

Yes, attached is an 8 track EP of sorts, of covers. A SoundCloud link. A couple of them I wrote myself but still covers. They are very different from the originals, some of them are even different from the previous covers I’ve done of the same song, previously posted here! I know, it is confusing, but it is for you. I cannot stop you from sharing it with people who aren’t paid subscribers to this Substack, just follow your heart on this one. I put a lot of effort into it. More than I really should have, but you know me.

Will Sheff puts his all into everything he does, no matter how big or small, and he is my spirit animal on this little project. Put your all into it and do it for the love. Sheff style.

To explain the idea behind this EP, I go back to the Talkhouse interview I did with my buddy Liam Kazar. I cannot listen to it because the juxtaposition of Liam’s mellifluous voice and my voice, it just upsets me. Liam said something that stuck with me. He said that it took him a year to figure out what kind of album he wanted to make and then a year to make it.

So in the last year I have been trying to figure out what kind of album I want to make. This does not really apply to the New Pornographers, a band that I am always working on but cannot talk about freely, for various reasons that go from harmless to horrific. I have been trying to figure out what else I want to do.

These covers I have been doing are a kind of control group. I know I like the song. When I am working on originals I am constantly questioning the song, but I do not question the covers. That leaves me open to concentrate on the arrangements, to push the songs around. Yes, even though Charlie Goucher once warned that one should not push the music around. We each follow our own path, I suppose. So I have been recording these covers to figure out what I want my own songs to sound like. Yes, it’s a process. Nothing is ever finished, you just try to stop in an interesting place, etc…

I think they’re in an interesting place. I’ve had to go with my instincts. It’s all I’ve got right now.

I did a DIY mastering job on them so forgive me if the levels are weird. I’m trying here. I will just go into listing the tracks and there will be enough tangents by the end of it that it will feel like an essay of some sort.

Track 1:

Chicken Blows / Blood Beast

Aside from a couple of them, these are songs by people I’d call friends. A couple started out as bands I love but then later they became friends. This one is, of course, a Guided By Voices song. Written by my pal Robert Pollard. I love the guy. A complete original. Midwestern jock who also happens to be one of the greatest and most prolific songwriters of our age. It was fun wading into the massive pool of GBV songs trying to figure out what song to cover. Why Chicken Blows? Why not? It just jumped out at me. Not even in my top 20 GBV songs but still a masterpiece.

Way back in the 90s, Robert Pollard heard the album ‘Hit Songs For Girls’ by my band Superconductor and crazily enough I found out that the singer of my favorite new band was a fan of mine. That meant so so much to me. He took us on the Mag Earwig tour and at the time I was just grateful to play in front of people, to experience the excitement of being part of a big show by a popular band. It never occurred to me that I would get there on my own. I assumed that Pollard’s coattails were my best and only shot, and I was happy to ride them. There was a moment backstage when he sang me snippets of the new songs he’d been writing. One of them was ‘Surgical Focus’ (which was on the next album) and the other was ‘Blood Beast’. Bob singing a cappella ‘Blood beast! Guest list plus one!’ filled me with great joy. I've never heard the song. It’s on the box set? I think. I decided to tack on my own version of the song as a coda, using the only lyrics I know. I couldn’t remember any melody, just a vague memory of the cadence of the words. That’s Charley Drayton drumming on it. He is a big deal and a very cool guy. Look him up if you don’t know. OK, one factoid… he was the drummer on Love Shack!

Track 2:

It Matters To Me

I heard Faith Hill sing this one around the time it was a hit and what can I say except that I picked up what it was laying down. If you strip all that 90s modern country production away, it is a really good country song.

I am a fan of country music but I do not like most of it because I have very fierce ideas about what it should do. It must cut to the heart of the matter. Yes, just like Don Henley. Hank Williams’ ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ is one of the all time greatest country songs because it is all there clear as day from the first note. I can imagine George Jones or Patsy Cline singing ‘It Matters To Me’.

Weirdly enough, I wanted to cover this song in the early days of The New Pornographers. I don’t know what we would have done with it. It may be that I tried to arrange it for trashy indie pop and quickly realized that it wouldn’t work. I just liked it. I decided to go with a minimal Yazoo/Yaz feel here. Maybe that doesn’t come across, so I’m telling you. ‘Only You’ could be a beautiful country song. It cuts to the bone, like good country should.

It’s been kind of a rough week, somewhere between the professional and the personal, and I felt like singing a sad country song.

Track 3:

Twin Cinema

This one is a New Pornographers song. I’ve already posted a version of it but this is different! I added 10% more Roches ‘Hammond Song’ to the vibe. I like how it came out. A very different song and that’s what I’m trying to do here. Not trying to be faithful. Using the shell of the song. The carapace.

Track 4:

Chump Changed

I posted a VERY different version of this one last year. A Bejar song from Electric Version. I really liked the loop I came up with and decided to use it for another song. When I took it out, I realized how much of the music was just that loop. Now it’s more minimal, lighter. I can’t remember how much I’ve changed the melody. In the spirit of this exercise, I’ve done a lot of melody-changing. I like the bass line. It’s fun to play bass, I like it better than guitar these days. It’s more contained and rhythmic, and yes it adds bass.

Track 5:

Margaret V Pauline

A Neko Case song that I’ve posted before but yet again… it’s very different. Right after I posted the previous version, I noticed that this song lent itself to singing like Russell Mael. I did an improvised take using what I thought were ‘Sparks’ melodies. Yes, much falsetto. I didn’t want Neko to think I was mocking her song so I did the same thing again, but an octave lower. No more Sparks, but a different melody. The song has great lyrics and phrasing that work no matter what you do to them. The 80s Sparks vibe also stuck. She covered Sparks, I cover her in what I think of as a Sparks style. It is a cosmic conversation.

I played last week’s version of this for my friend Adam Schatz (who is currently on tour with Neko) and he found it disorienting. Oh, the avant jazz musician is disoriented! Well, la di da.

Track 6:

You Make Me

A Nick Lowe song from the 1979 album Labour Of Lust. Beautiful and compact. A country song without being a country song. He is good at that.

Track 7:

A Summer Wasting

When the New Pornographers were just starting, when we were rehearsing at our 1st drummer Fisher’s place, there would be smoke breaks and we’d listen to what every cool person was listening to in 1998. We listened to Neutral Milk Hotel and Belle & Sebastian. Both of those bands made me rethink how I write. I no longer wanted to be Bacharach or Brian Wilson, I wanted to be more…. more…. more like them. When we got to tour with Belle & Seb in 2006, it felt like the greatest validation. We were their peers. It’s all I ever wanted. Lyrically this isn’t a B&S masterpiece, but it is beautiful and light, perfect in its simplicity. One of their more indelible melodies. So indelible I believe I kept it. A nice melody shape. A charming little carapace. Sturdy.

Track 8:

You Won’t Need Those Where You’re Going

This is similar to the version I posted months ago. Just thought it needed a ‘proper release’. I write that with full-on irony.

So there it is. Please enjoy. Feel free to master it if you want.