This Bird Has Flown: A 40th Anniversary Tribute to the Beatles' Rubber Soul
Need to be reminded just how singular a phenomenon the Beatles were? Take a listen toThis Bird Has Flown, Razor & Tie's 40th anniversary indie-rock tribute to their second album of 1965,Rubber Soul. Tributes to other artists that aim to include songs as timeless as "Drive My Car," "Norwegian Wood," "Michelle," and "In My Life" typically have to cover their entire careers, and even then that's often not enough. This, however, is a one-album show, sequenced in the same order as the original, and the same thing could have been done with almost any other of the Beatles' LPs, with similar results. In some cases--theDonnas' "Drive My Car,"Dar Williams's "You Won't See Me,"Rhett Miller's "Girl"--the arrangements are a little too note-perfectly faithful to remain compelling. But a good number of the tracks here are sufficiently obscure to keep things interesting even if their arrangements do hew a little too closely to the originals. Into this category fallYonder Mountain String Band's "Think for Yourself" andMindy Smith's "The Word," two rarely covered songs it's a delight to hear recast in the Americana mold.The best listens onThis Bird Has Flown, however, are those that exhibit some of the experimentalism and innovation that was the mid-period Beatles' hallmark. On "If I Needed Someone,"Nellie McKayturns George Harrison's Byrds pastiche into a breezy day at a Brazilian beach;Lowstrip "Nowhere Man" to its bones in a typically minimalist performance; theFiery Furnacesrecast "Norwegian Wood" as a keyboard-driven funhouse extravaganza; andSufjan Stevenswarbles "What Goes On" beyond recognition, taking it from country Ringo vehicle to jazzy woodwind spectacle. The disc closes with theCowboy Junkies' "Run for Your Life": with murderous lead vocals and ominous, threatening instrumentation, it's a far cry from the slight number that weakly ended the original. Here's hoping there's a follow-up in 2006 for the 40th anniversary ofRevolver. --Benjamin LukoffMore Tributes of NoteLabour of Love: The Music of Nick LoweCaroline Now!: The Songs of Brian Wilson & the Beach BoysThis Is Where I Belong: The Songs of Ray Davies & the Kinks