This article was originally published on beingtheremag.com, an independent music and film magazine that ran from 2004 to 2007. It is presented here as part of the Being There Magazine archive.
By Adam Anklewicz | Being There Magazine, March/April 2006
Label: Bluefog
Toronto label Bluefog recently released a vinyl-only pressing of 1000 records, with one side featuring The Constantines performing four songs by Canadian icon Neil Young and the flipside featuring supergroup The Unintended covering four songs by another Canadian icon, Gordon Lightfoot. Gracing the cover is a black and white painting of a maple tree and on the back, a maple leaf.
The Constantines perform four unpredictable Neil Young compositions, true to the originals. They start off with a very generic cover of “Don’t Be Denied” from Young’s Time Fades Away . They don’t do anything new with the song and turn it into a bit of a dull recording. The vocals have little or no life in them, leaving the listener bored. They do the same thing with the following track, “Transformer Man” from the 1982 album Trans . What Young did on the original recording is lost in their straight cover. The second half of their side of the record however is where they succeed.
“Don’t Cry No Tears” is taken from 1975’s Zuma . Again, it’s another straight up cover, but is perhaps the best on the record. This short track picks up the electric-folk feel of Young’s original. “Shots” from Young’s Re-ac-tor is covered absolutely fantastically. Dizzy in a maze of distorted guitar solos, the lead vocals are broken and off-key, and though more painful than Young’s off-key singing, helps to create a great mess of sound. The Constantines get it perfectly on this cover. While all the songs are very straight-forward, the band are able to capture some of the raw energy in the latter two songs while the other two sound like someone falling asleep as they play their guitar.
For the uninitiated, The Unintended are a “supergroup” of Canadian musicians featuring all the members of The Sadies, Rick White from Elevator and Eric’s Trip and Greg Keelor from Blue Rodeo. The Unintended are at a disadvantage on this record, because while The Constantines had the ability to choose from a forty-year catalogue of one of Canada’s best songwriters, The Unintended had of forty-year catalogue of one of Canada’s best mediocre songwriters.
Having one record under their belt, The Unintended more closely resemble the psychedelic garage rock that is Elevator than the country rock that is either The Sadies or Blue Rodeo. I was not expecting to hear covers as close to Lightfoot’s originals as I did. Three of the four tracks come from Lightfoot’s The Way I Feel including the title track. Rick White sings “The Way I Feel” and that song more closely resembles the previous work of The Unintended and makes this album so great. It’s the first time on the record that anyone dares to mess with a classic, and the strength in this recording stands in its differences from the original. When I picked up this record, this song was what I was expecting the entire Unintended side to be like.
“Rosanna,” “Walls” and “Redwood Hills” follow very closely to the originals, but the band adds a lot of their own personality to these songs, turning them into their own and making them distinct enough from the originals. This is the side that makes the album worthwhile. It’s not a fantastic album, but The Unintended are able to combine their blend of country-psychedelia with Lightfoot’s brand of folk-country and the output is unique.