Various Artists - Various Artists Score Twenty Years of Merge Records: The Covers Review

Merge Records doesn't look its age. Originally formed as an outlet for Superchunk material, the Durham, N.C.-based label has grown into an indie institution, but only gradually-- year by year, release by release. It never allied itself with a scene or a sound, so the mind doesn't automatically tether it to a specific place or time, the way Sub Pop, despite its strong roster this decade, will be most closely associated with Seattle in the late 1980s and early 90s. So it's hard to believe Merge is already 20 years old, an occasion the label is marking with a big birthday bash-- the five-day XX Merge fest in July-- and a subscription-only series of commemorative retrospectives and remixes. Perhaps the most intriguing party favor is Score! Twenty Years of Merge Records: The Covers, a choppy but oddly endearing compilation that enlists 20 non-Merge acts to cover Merge songs.

Score! doesn't resemble a traditional label sampler as much as one of those carefully curated compilations like this year's Dark Was the Night. Both releases benefit charities, both feature the National at their most subdued, and both serve as a useful state-of-indie report. But where Dark emphasized "primarily folkie tunefulness, baroque lines in which the guitar is subservient to other instruments" (as Scott Plagenhoef wrote in his review), Score! allows and even encourages these artists to indulge every idiosyncrasy, no matter how potentially off-putting or digressive. The result is a weirder, less polite album, one that showcases a diversity of musical styles and seems much more representative of 2000s indie....full text For its 20th birthday, North Carolina indie label Merge Records invited artists such as Ryan Adams, Bright Eyes and Death Cab for Cutie to cover 20 of its classic tunes. The bands get to work with enthusiasm: Okkervil River turn East River Pipe’s "All You Little Suckers" into a dreamy, electro-fied slow dance; the Shins do a jangly version of Tenement Halls' "Plenty Is Never Enough." Score! is at its best when the interpretations get loose, as Tracey Thorn and Jens Lekman prove when they strip the snarkiness from the Magnetic Fields' "Yeah! Oh, Yeah!" and make it a soulful relationship lament....full text So, as part of it's 20th Anniversary celebrations, Merge are releasing a "compilation of non-Merge bands covering classics from the label's back catalog." The tracklisting makes me think this may be worth getting:

01 Quasi: "Beautiful Life" (3Ds cover)
02 Les Savy Fav: "Precision Auto" (Superchunk cover)
03 The Shins: "Plenty Is Never Enough" (Tenement Halls cover)
04 St. Vincent and the National: "Sleep All Summer" (Crooked Fingers cover)
05 Broken Social Scene: "Complications" (The Clean cover)
06 Ryan Adams: "Like a Fool" (Superchunk cover)
07 Bright Eyes: "Papa Was a Rodeo" (Magnetic Fields cover)
08 Lavender Diamond: "New Ways of Living" (Destroyer cover)
09 The Apples in Stereo: "King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 3" (Neutral Milk Hotel cover)
10 Laura Cantrell: "Cowboy on the Moon" (Lambchop cover)
11 Bill Callahan: "Santa Maria" (Versus cover)
12 Barbara Manning: "Through With People" (Portastatic cover)
13 The Mountain Goats: "Drug Life" (East River Pipe cover)
14 The New Pornographers: "Don't Destroy This Night" (Rock*A*Teens cover)
15 Tracey Thorn and Jens Lekman: "Yeah! Oh, Yeah!" (Magnetic Fields cover)
16 The Hive Dwellers: "My Noise" (Superchunk cover)
17 Ted Leo & the Pharmacists: "The Numbered Head" (Robert Pollard cover)
18 Okkervil River: "All You Little Suckers" (East River Pipe cover)
19 Death Cab for Cutie: "Kicked In" (Superchunk cover)
20 Times New Viking: "Neighborhood #1" (Arcade Fire cover)...full text