In Stores Now: SCORE! - 20 Years of Merge Records: the Covers! by Various Artists

Illustration titled "Handful after Handful was thrown in" by Mildred Lyon from Journeys Through Bookland by Charles Sylvester, 1922

So Merge Records has been around for twenty years, and they've been celebrating with SCORE!, a subscriber-only extravaganza of mix CDs and other goodies. One part of SCORE! that will also be available as a standalone release is SCORE! - 20 Years of Merge Records: the Covers!, a collection of twenty covers of well-loved songs by Merge artists performed by artists that have never been on Merge Records. The song choices are varied and good overall, and I can't complain about the list of artists included. Well, I guess there's always grounds for complaint when Bright Eyes is involved, but the good definitely outweighs the bad here. In almost every case, I am a fan of either the song being covered or the artist doing the cover, so it makes for a great listening experience.

Things start off on a high note with Quasi's raucous organ-heavy cover of "Beautiful Things" by New Zealand noise-poppers the 3Ds. The Mountain Goats and Okkervil River both do great covers of songs by East River Pipe, an underrated favorite of mine. In the "covers that shouldn't work that do" category you have Lavender Diamond covering Destroyer and Ted Leo covering Robert Pollard, as well as the very bizarre (but fun) cover of Arcade Fire's "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" by Times New Viking. The legendary Neutral Milk Hotel had to be represented, but I'm glad that the Apples (in Stereo) decided to take on "King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 3". For one thing, they are one of the only bands with the cred to take on a song from In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, as Robert Schneider produced that record. Second, the song is a fun throwaway that the Apples do as a sugary rave-up that works well enough.

Two other legendary Merge bands, Superchunk and the Magnetic Fields, actually represent the weakest part of the record. Magnetic Fields covers should be easy, but Bright Eyes ("Papa Was a Rodeo") and Jens Lekman & Tracey Thorn ("Yeah Oh Yeah") stick too close to the original arrangements and the reverence kills the humor that is so important to both songs. Surprisingly, Death Cab For Cutie and Ryan Adams turn in the two best Superchunk covers with songs from Foolish, while Les Savy Fav doing a boring recreation of "Prevision Auto" and Calvin Johnson's Hive Dwellers do a terrible lo-fi free jazz deconstruction of the classic "My Noise". Barbara Manning fairs better with "Through With People" by Superchunk side-project Portastatic - it's one of the disc's best tracks. And the two bands of Chris Lopez, Tenement Halls and Rock*a*teens, get excellent power-pop treatments by the Shins and New Pornographers respectively.

But the best track on the record, for me, is the National's cover of "Sleep All Summer", from Crooked Fingers' underrated Dignity and Shame. The National's Matt Berninger voice has a gravitas to match Eric Bachmann, but with a much smoother version of that weary vibe. St. Vincent proves an excellent duet partner, and the horn-based arrangement fits the song's mood perfectly. Kudos go to the people at Merge for having an excellent discography to work from and to the contributing artists for having great taste in music.

"Sleep All Summer" by St. Vincent and the National