VARIOUS ARTISTS
The Believer Music Issue (Vol. 3, No. 5)
McSweeney’s
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Ultra.Weekend: Friday/Saturday
Ultra.Records
· Discussed: Summertime comps, being fiscally responsible, wine coolers, Colin Meloy’s endearing speech impediment, Mountain Goats and their pet politics, Friday night thongs and my bashful bathing attire.
In a world where a person never gets their money’s worth, it’s rare to find a true bargain.
The Believer magazine makes penny-pinching a treat with its June-July issue. Not only does it offer a collection of essays written by some of our generation’s greatest thinkers, but once a year it manages to put out one of the finest music compilations anywhere – all for the low price of $12. Leave it to a literary magazine to make this summer’s best music collection.
This year, the CD consists of cover songs compiled by author Matthew Derby (he writes a brief synopsis of each song inside the magazine, along with the reason for his choice) and showcases all your favourite artists doing covers of songs by all your other favourite artists. The Mountain Goats cover the Silver Jews; The Decemberists lisp through Joanna Newsom’s "Bridges & Balloons" and Devendra Banhart flirts with Antony and the Johnsons. You may already be familiar with some of the covers on the compilation (Spoon’s take on Yo La Tengo or The Shins’ version of "We Will Become Silhouettes"), but for the most part, the CD plays out like a music lover’s treasure hunt.
There are three standout tracks on the compilation – The Constantines "Why I Didn’t Like August 93" by Elevator to Hell (two minutes of pure rock bliss), Wolf Parades’ version of Frog Eyes’ "Claxxon’s Lament" (it puts the original to shame) and CocoRosie’s haunting "Ohio" by Damien Jurado – but all 17 tracks are mind-blowing. The Believer CD is like someone who knows you really well making you the best mixtape of your life. Go, roll some change and just buy the gosh-darned thing already.
The polar opposite of The Believer compilation is the techno-heavy Ultra.Weekend – a two-disc set that takes thinking out of the equation by telling you exactly what you should be listening to on the two party days of the weekend (for those of us who regularly read The Believer, that would be Friday and Saturday). Both CDs are appropriately labelled like those days-of-the-week underwear.
It’s got remixed versions of Scissor Sisters, Moby, Mylo and Erasure, and is the kind of music you’re likely to hear blasting out of a Jeep as it cruises down The Avenue. The one exception is the New Order remix of "Krafty," which sounds like old New Order before they settled into middle-age and became adult contemporary.
If you like wearing thong bikinis, drinking wine coolers and tanning – well, here’s the music to do it to. Personally, I prefer a one-piece.
THE BELIEVER 5/5
ULTRA.WEEKEND 1/5
KIRSTEN KOSLOSKI
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