CD Odyssey Disc 668: Various Artists

I’m having a fun weekend; so much fun it feels almost too full.

Case in point – I am scrambling to write this review so I can go watch my beloved Miami Dolphins plan the Oakland Raiders. If this review posts after kick off don’t judge me – I’m taping the game to make sure I don’t miss a single play.

On to the record!

Disc 668 is…. Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska

Artist: Various Artists

Year of Release: 2000

What’s up with the Cover?  An abandoned car on the side of the road offsets a string of power poles stretching into the distance. No grain-yellows of Nebraska are here, just a washed out brown-grey that speaks to the stark loneliness of the Great Plains and the desperate characters that inhabit them on this album.

How I Came To Know It:  I’ve only had this album a few months. I think I was falling down the Youtube rabbit-hole one day and saw the Chrissie Hynde/Adam Seymour version of the title track. A little digging at the local record store unearthed the rest of the album.

How It Stacks Up:  This is a compilation album, so doesn’t really stack up. It does make me wish more classic albums would get this treatment.

Rating: 4 stars

Hearing other artists sing the songs from Springsteen’s “Nebraska” underscores what a masterpiece the original album is. “Badlands” is an exact replica of the original 1982 record, with various artists putting a new spin on each of the songs. I generally prefer the Springsteen originals, although there are many tracks here that equal the original recording. The great thing is you don’t have to choose one over the other – “Badlands” gives you a chance to hear the whole record again with fresh ears.

The original album is filled with the stories of desperate characters doing desperate, often illegal things, as they stumble through a life with a lot of hard turns. Since I haven’t reviewed “Nebraska” yet, I’ll focus on the treatments given the songs, rather than their subject matter.

The album opens with Chrissie Hynde and Adam Seymour covering “Nebraska.” Hynde’s deep and soulful rock voice is the perfect match to this song, and she perfectly captures its sparseness and desperation. An organ echoes throughout, underscoring the emptiness of bad decisions and broken futures. It is one of the album’s standouts.

Folk singer Dar Williams comes through strong as well, covering my favourite song on the original, “Highway Patrolman.” The song is about two brothers – one good and one bad – and I like that Dar doesn’t change the main character’s sex. It doesn’t matter that she is singing a male part. It just gives the song a great storytelling quality.

In fact I was listening to this track right as I arrived at work earlier this week and it inspired me so much that I immediately looked up the chords and printed them out so I could learn it on guitar. I haven’t picked the guitar up in two months, but when I do so next, it will be to learn “Highway Patrolman.”

Hank Williams III is the perfect touch of lowlife twang to give “Atlantic City” a new feel. Hank III’s redneck approach to the song makes the character in the song simultaneously more cocksure and less able to handle the trouble that’s bussing in from out of state to Atlantic City. I had this cover from Hank III’s album “Lovesick, Broke and Driftin’” but that version had a ‘hidden track’ tagged onto the end of it, which is annoying. It is nice to have just the song on its own.

On “Used Cars” Ani DiFranco’s whispered delivery brings out Springsteen’s character of a young child’s first understanding of economic disparity. These are the kids that grow up to the crime sprees on “Nebraska” and DiFranco gives you a front row seat to the innocent kids they start out as in a way the big an manly Springsteen can’t do.

The original “Nebraska” album ends with the relatively optimistic “Reason to Believe” and the cover on “Badlands” by Aimee Mann and Michael Penn is even more upbeat.  My only quibble on this song is wishing Mann took the lead on vocals, rather than providing loose harmony support to Penn. That’s just because I love Aimee Mann’s voice though, not an indictment of Penn’s solid work here.

Instead of ending with “Reason To Believe” the CD has three bonus Springsteen covers off albums other than Nebraska. The best of these is Johnny Cash’s version of “I’m on Fire,” but Raul Malo and the Mavericks version of “Downbound Train” and Damien Jurado and Rose Thomas’ “Wages of Sin” are both excellent as well.

When your original material is five-star quality you’ve already got a leg up, but you also have a lot of pressure to do the work justice. “Badlands” comes through beautifully, providing new takes on one of Springsteen’s great achievements, without losing the core elements of the original that make it such a classic.

Best tracks: Nebraska (Chrissie Hynde), Atlantic City (Hank III), Johnny 99 (Los Lobos),  Highway Patrolman (Dar Williams), Open All Night (Son Volt), Reason to Believe (Aimee Mann/Michael Penn), I’m on Fire (Johnny Cash)