3 out of 5

Label: Friends Records

Produced by: Will Oldham (A-side recorded by, B-side mastered by)

I’ll always have a beef with Friends Records for accepting my money for a couple of bandcamp purchases and never sending me the records. I wrote them; got no answer. Their website isn’t up anymore and they aren’t actively releasing, as far as I know, so I don’t mean for this to be celebratory of a label closing down – and maybe it was on me; maybe I purchased digital only and didn’t realize it, and I’m thankful I do have digital copies of my purchases – but all the same: beef.

Maybe that beef makes me a bit skeptical of what feels like a wanky release: covering Sheryl Crow and Springsteen; pairing noisemakers Oxes and Microkingdom with oddball troubadour Will Oldham and a raspy Samuel T. Herring, respectively. It… is a bit wanky, but maybe only the B-side, which never quite feels as emotional as the pairing seems to want it to be, whereas Will Oldham somehow renders Crow’s lyrics into something that it feels like he wrote and should be singing, and we-can’t-walk-a-straight-line Oxes do walk a straight line, and bring true emotion to their playing. Wild.

For Microkingdom and Samuel T. Herring, their cover of I’m On Fire is more of a curiosity, with the melody emerging from Microkingdom’s clatter, and Herring’s faux-Tom Waits vocal scrawl implying weight. You can clearly tell by my language that I’m not feeling this, and, yeah: beyond that curiosity, this reeks of a karaoke take instead of being inspired; playing a song because these musicians were asked to. On the other hand, the Oxes and Oldham pairing should draw more instant ire – I’m more likely to buy these people as Springsteen fans versus Sheryl Crow fans – but, again, the grouping manages to make the music their own, and each is propped up by what the other does, kept on rails in their various indulgences but with enough crossover oddity that they can also shine. It’s a fantastic cover. The propulsive recording by Bob Weston (who masters the MK / Herring track, setting things on similar aural levels) is the icing.