An Introduction to … Elliott Smith

Should the pesky kids in your life be deaf to everything but what’s screamed out by blubbing monkeys on The X Factor, should you be nearing tears yourself on the back of the conundrum that pits you somewhere between recognising Simon Cowell’s unifying impact on your family’s Saturday nights and his evil death grip on the gullet of the arts, should you be reaching, grasping for some gentle way of re-educating the generation below yours, well, have I got just the yoke for you. On October 29, Domino will release An Introduction to … Elliott Smith on CD and lovely collectable vinyl. It will feature fourteen tracks compiled from all seven of Elliott’s albums: Roman Candle, Elliott Smith, Either/Or, XO, Figure 8, From A Basement on the Hill, and New Moon. Domino state their intention as “enabling new generations to learn about Elliott’s music by providing a pathway for people to delve more deeply into his … There’s more

Under The Covers

Like all drunken Irish balladeers, myself and my friends love a good yowling session of a Saturday night. At our most recent Singstar marathon, my cousin and I got up to sing Erasure’s A Little Respect, and were surprised (really, because we’re terrific singers) to get relatively low scores, until it occurred to us that we’d instead been belting our way through the version by American ridicu-rockers Wheatus. We’d been emphasising the wrong words, rushing through the wrong lines, because we were rocking out to synthpop. Funny thing how a good cover version can nibble its way through your beloved original. It’s not the custom for a cover version to outshine the original (fear not, Erasure fans! I’m not strictly referring to the Wheatus usurpers!), so when you do come across a particularly wonderful cover, it’s a real treat. There are those, like Wheatus’ version of A Little Respect, that … There’s more