Damien Jurado and Richard Swift – Other People’s Songs, Volume One review

Take two cult US singer-songwriters, put them together in a tiny studio for a couple of days with a four-track cassette recorder, a microphone and a list of songs they had always wanted to cover, and the result is brief but enlightening: nine songs that are as wide-ranging as you can imagine. While two covers don't necessarily startle (Bill Fay's Be Not So Fearful and John Denver's Follow Me), several others spin you around. Pick of the bunch is Hello Sunshine, a psych-roots gem of a song from the obscure 1970s American band Relatively Clean Rivers. Other genuine surprises include a spooky take on Outside My Window, by 1960s vocal trio The Fleetwoods, and a decidedly weird version of Kraftwerk's Radioactivity. Oddball delights abound – Volume Two soon, if you don't mind.

[ damienjurado.com ]