Covering Our Bases: The Complete Titus Andronicus Covers

It's no secret how much I love covers. I mean, if I had an kickass rock band, God knows that I'd spend a lot of time kicking out my favorite jams. I think that most musicians are also music nerds and although they get to have the fun of getting up their and making music while I just write about it, when I see them geek out over some Modern Lovers song a band that no one's heard of I can see that we're not so different, they and I. I've had Titus on the brain, what with listening to their latest record non-stop, so I decided that I might as well get all those covers in one place throw, slap a bow on it and send it your way.

New Jersey's finest Newly-minted New Yorkers Titus Andronicus (does it pain you to read those words as much as it did me to write them?) have always been particularly generous with their covers. Between the tour singles, free mixtapes and raucous live singalongs, they've amassed quite the list. Fortunately for you, dear reader, On Warmer Music has them all right here, just for you.

Titus cuts a wide swath of musical territory with their cover choices. The list runs the gamut from punk icons to jukebox favorites. There are bands I needed to look up (and could barely find anything on), mid-level cult acts, as well as a healthy swath of alt cannon from the Reed to Richman, Westerberg to Cobain. They even play with their audience at times (I mean, Coldplay and Lana Del Ray - honest appreciation, hipster baiting or both?) but it's all in good fun. The quality of these recordings varies greatly from nearly-unlistenable bass-heavy messes to studio masters and everywhere in-between.

So enjoy and remember, they may not all be the best recordings you've ever heard, but there are undeniably a lot of them. And they're free.

Our Concert Could Be Your Life

Elvis Costello never said that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture", despite what you may have heard. I'm glad too, because although many of music's joys are ineffable, that's no reason not to try to put them into words. Michael Azerrad knows this better than most people, as the author of Our Band Could Be Your Life, the seminal history of the "post-punk" or "alternative" or "D.I.Y." or "whatever name you care to give it" movement of brash, independent and unfiltered music that bubbled up around the country during the 1980's before jumping the charts in 1992 (to very mixed results).


The subtitle of Azerrad's book is "Scenes From The American Indie Underground" and it's not unfair to say that the bands chronicled in this book functionally started the musical genre that is now ubiquitously and unhelpfully referred to as "indie rock." Of the 13 bands profiled only one, Sonic Youth is still going. A few such as Mission of Burma, Big Black, the Butthole Surfers and even the Replacements have reformed (although the latter was a two song, studio-only affair). But the influence they project onto the scene today is almost incalculable.

Soundtrack Sampler - Adventureland

Soundtracks are a wonderful thing. There's a bootleg of John Darnielle from the Mountain Goats covering Neutral Milk Hotel's "Two-Headed Boy" where he says "I'm sorry if I screw this up, because I know there's a lot of you out there who are living and dying with this song" and that perfectly sums up what great music has the potential to be. If you truly love certain songs they become the soundtrack to your life - you live and die with them.


The only problem with that is that your life is under-rehearsed, way over budget and full of people who are far less interesting and attractive than those you see on the big screen. Movies are less messy and more satisfying. Good directors know that music is an emotional short-cut, able to short-circuit logic and quickly hack directly into our emotional-response centers. That means that a well-chosen soundtrack can not only open minds to new music but turn a good movie into a great one.

Six Song Six-Pack - Growin' Up

Childhood is perhaps the most important part of our lives. It structures our expectations and way of seeing the world. They're called formative years for a reason. I mean people don't pay therapists good money to either recapture or escape from those early years for nothing.

Science has also shown that, after smell/taste, sound, specifically music, is the most evocative stimulus for our brains. So it's no wonder that pop music is littered with reminiscences and tales pleasant, painful and sometimes frightening from musicians' salad days. This week we've got six songs for you that manage to give you lovable nostalgia without the treacle, enjoy!