Thursday 3 November 2011

LOVING THE ALIEN - ATHENS GEORGIA SALUTES DAVID BOWIE


Being a lifetime Bowie fanatic, I'm forever a sucker for Bowie tribute albums! I purchased this some years back when there seemed to be a whole load of Bowie tribute albums coming out at once (I bought them all, of course!). This one is definitely one of the better ones featuring as it does a great batch of unknown bands/artists all hailing from the great Athens, Georgia. Featuring 10 tracks and not one of them actually being "Loving The Alien"(!), Loving The Alien flows very nicely from start to finish. The decidedly REM-ish Robert Lurie Collective do a brilliant cover of Bowie's obscure classic "I Can't Read", The Quiet Men superbly rendition "Big Brother" (although sadly don't end it with "Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" so the song feels a bit sudden when it reaches the end), Mime has a refreshingly unique take (which might not be everyone's cup of tea!) on one of my all time fave Bowie songs - the Bowie standard "John, I'm Only Dancing", Ceiling Fan do a superb, grungy and ever-so-faithful version of "Hang Onto Yourself" (one of my favourite tracks on this abum) and the same goes for Slackdaddy's excellent version of "Starman". Don't Analyse really does something (I'm not sure what but I like it!) to the Low instrumental "A New Career In A New Town". Ultimate fave track on here though is Simultaneous Discs' unique, epic, downbeat take on Bowie's upbeat pop classic "Modern Love". What makes Loving The Alien a winner is the way each artist has covered the song with an obvious passion for the material but injecting it with something fresh/different without taking away what made the original what it was in the first place. In other words, they haven't ruined a good song - they've just added another flavour to it. A must own for Bowie fans.

1999
VBR kbps
64 mb

Ripped & encoded by The Glass Humanoid.