Various Artists - SCORE 20 Years of Merge Records - THE COVERS Review

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 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 01. Beautiful Things by Quasi
02. Precision Auto by Les Savy Fav
03. Plenty Is Never Enough by The Shins
04. Sleep All Summer by St. Vincent and the National
05. Complications by Broken Social Scene
06. Like a Fool by Ryan Adams
07. Papa Was a Rodeo by Bright Eyes
08. New Ways of Living by Lavender Diamond
09. King of Carrot Flowers Pt. Three by The Apples in Stereo
10. Cowboy on the Moon by Laura Cantrell
11. Santa Maria by Bill Callahan
12. Through with People by Barbara Manning
13. Drug Life by The Mountain Goats
14. Don't Destroy This Night by The New Pornographers
15. Yeah! Oh, Yeah! by Tracey Thorn & Jens Lekman
16. My Noise by The Hive Dwellers
17. The Numbered Head by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
18. All You Little Suckers by Okkervil River
19. Kicked In by Death Cab for Cutie
20. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) by Times New Viking...full text