venta

It's Friday, it's about 3 o'clock. It's time to go underneath the covers (with the lights out).

I always recommend listening to a cover version without knowing what or who it is, so click on the link before reading ahead...

Today's cover version [link to mp3 expired]

That was Jeffrey Lewis covering Big A, Little A, originally by Crass.

When Jeffrey Lewis (lo-fi singer/songwriter, antifolk hero and cartoonist extraordinaire) announced an intention of producing an album of covers of Crass songs, I boggled gently. For several reasons.

1. His song are often (though not always) acoustic-y, vering on the twee, and leaning strongly towards storytelling.
2. Crass are loud and noisy and have unintelligible lyrics.
3. An entire album of covers from a little-known band, by a little-known artist?

Which shows how much I know, because 12 Crass Songs is great. Crass's awfulness and unintelligibility were apparently products of the n^th generation hometaped audio cassettes I listened to as a teenager - either that, or in the last couple of decades they've secretly remastered everything they ever did.

Anyway, Crass lyrics turn out to be surprisingly sensible - even if you think the sort of DIY anarchism they promoted was nonsense, they express themselves very coherently on the topic. And actually, J-Lew's wandering, wavering style suits the lyrics really well. The home-made nature of most of his stuff is something I suspect Crass would have approved.

I'd recommend this album to Jeffrey Lewis fans, curious Crass fans, or people who like the anarcho-punk sentiments but can't hack the guitars :)