SC100 – SC100

We start with the Late Great Nikki Sudden laying down the sonic law with June Panic’s Seeing Double. Ohia immediately return the compliment by covering Sudden’s brilliant The Last Bandit. You get the picture.

 

We start with the Late Great Nikki Sudden laying down the sonic law with June Panic’s Seeing Double. Ohia immediately return the compliment by covering Sudden’s brilliant The Last Bandit. You get the picture.

 

 

SC100 – SC100

http://www.secretlycanadian.com/ http://www.konkurrent.nl/

 

SC100 is a party album no less; this CD being the "centenary release" of brilliant eclectic label Secretly Canadian. What better to have the artists on the label’s roster covering each others’ songs? It kicks off as it goes on throughout, in a domino effect of one artist covering the preceding ones’ songs. We start with the Late Great Nikki Sudden laying down the sonic law with June Panic’s Seeing Double. Ohia immediately return the compliment by covering Sudden’s brilliant The Last Bandit. You get the picture.

 

I could fall into a trap and enthuse at length about each track; suffice to say that there are eighteen tracks here, and frankly each one is a gem. As the artists range from Jens Lekman and Suzanne Langille to Danielson, you the listener are assured of diversity. Yet the trick of each artist covering a selected song from a stable-mate gives this enterprise a great feeling of togetherness and solidarity.

 

Stand out tracks are difficult to pick on a release of this quality, so I’ll content myself with two to give you an inkling of what to expect. Early Day Miners do a tremendous stomping, slobbering fuzz-tastic version of Suzanne Langille’s The Escape whereas The Impossible Shapes cartoony, country-stomp/pissed ska take on the Japonize Elephants’ 40 Years of Our Family is just brilliant. There, will that do you?

 

I really can’t do any more except implore you to get this CD.

 

Words: Richard Foster