Six Originals, Six Covers, and Two Bonus Tracks

This 14-song collection pulls together material Crenshaw originally recorded and released across three years of 10” vinyl EPs  [1 2 3 4 5 6] and a Kickstarter campaign. Each EP included an original A-side and a B-side that featured a cover song and a reworking of an earlier Crenshaw tune. Developed as an antidote to the grinding cycle of album-tour-album-tour, Crenshaw used the project as an opportunity to record with a variety of musical friends, as well as alone in his studio, and to revisit favorite songs from his and other writers’ catalogs. This set omits the reworkings of his own material, but adds a bonus live cover of the Everly Brothers’ “Man With Money,” recorded with the Bottle Rockets, and a previously unreleased demo of the original “Front Page News.”

The originals are surprisingly similar in mood, given the span of time over which they were recorded. All are mid-tempo, introspective and slightly downcast, though the earlier sides, “Stranger and Stranger” and particularly the recriminations of “I Don’t See You Laughing Now,” spark with a bit more energy. The covers are an eclectic lot, both in the artists covered and the specific songs selected, spanning titles from The Move, Carpenters, Lovin’ Spoonful, Bobby Fuller Four, Easybeats and James McMurtry. Programming the originals 1-6 (in reverse chronological order) and covers 7-12 undoes the original release structure and makes the disc’s second half more interesting than the first, but a playlist (6, 7, 5, 8, 4, 9, 3, 10, 2, 11, 1, 12) restores the original order and pairings. A nice collection for turntable-less fans, but newbies still need to start with Marshall Crenshaw. [©2015 Hyperbolium]