Cover Magazine
Cover Magazineis an album of covers by Giant Sand. Howe Gelb, the frontman of these sun-baked Arizona country-rock legends, is a musician's musician who countsPJ Harvey,Grandaddy, and pretty much the whole of today's discerning alt.country set among his devoted fans. Now, however, he means to give something back:Cover Magazinefields a set of covers of Gelb's friends and influences, closing with a three-song live set recorded on tour with Grandaddy in 2001. The cover versions should be your first point of call: mostly recorded withCalexico's Joey Burns and John Convertino as the rhythm section, they reinvent Gelb's picks as expansive epics, creeping with weird voodoo and sand-blasted melancholy. Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" becomes a quietly sinister conga shuffle. Johnny Cash's "Wayfaring Stranger" segues into a bare, whispered take on the Sinatra classic "Fly Me to the Moon." And X's "Johnny Hit and Run Pauline" finds Polly Harvey weighing in with a fraught, tense drawl during the chorus. The pick, though, is a wonderful, finger-clicking run through Sonny Bono's "The Beat Goes On"--and it's so good, they reprise it on the three-song live set, along with "Blue Marble Girl," a new Grandaddy number, and "The Inner Flame," a song by sadly deceased Giant Sand guitarist Rainer Ptacek.--Louis Pattison