Kiss the Bottle

July’s cover mix is a little late, I know. But you know what they say — better late than never, right? To make up for it, here’s a sad picture of Polly Jean. Aw, I know. Okay, a lot of good stuff this month. Let’s jump right in.

Glen Hansard kicks things off this mixtape the same way he starts the movie Once, with a Van Morrison cover (like you can wrong with a song by Van the Man) — he also did a great cover of “Astral Weeks” on Minnesota Public Radio a few years ago when he was promoting his last Frames album (link). Adam Franklin then does as subdued cover of my favorite Wolf Parade song, “Shine a Light,” complete with lush intertwining acoustic guitars. And from the series recorded on the Ray D’Arcy Show on Today FM in Dublin, Even Better Than the Real Thing, Picturehouse does a jaunty cover of Rachel Steven’s 2006 pop tune — I dig the trumpet especially. Then, Tom Petty gets translated to a drum machine beat and electronic bleeps under the watchful guise of the Mobius Band, livening up the song in the process. And Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan, recording under their Gutter Twins monicker, bring their gritty energy to Jose Gonzalez’s “Down the Line.”

I like the back-to-back of Damien Rice doing Radiohead with Benjamin Costello returning the favor. And though I don’t think Jesse Malin’s “You Can Make Him Like You” is better than the Hold Steady’s version — can anyone ever do the Hold Steady as well as the Hold Steady? (You don’t need to answer that, the answer’s a solid no.) — but I do like his take on this tune off Boys and Girls in America. And the last tune is, of course, in memory of the king of pop — a dancehall cover of “Billie Jean” that sounds as though it was uncovered in a dusty Jamaican record bin.

Lucero’s on here as an homage to a true story that happened to me during SXSW this year, a story that I’ve spent the last few months trying to convert to a joke or at least a funny anecdote without any semblance of success (you try conveying the humor about mixing up a southern rock band and a math rock band just because they both have Spanish names!). Anyway, who knew Jawbreaker would sound so good dressed up in their brand of southern rock? Not me.

Enjoy the mix.