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.

Covering Our Bases - Pixies

So I'll just say it - the Pixies are the indie rock version of the Beatles. I know there are some many aspects of this statement that can be quibbled with but here we have a four-person band that came out of nowhere to shoot to the top, had a brief but incredibly intense and fruitful run, only to retire, leaving a legacy that loomed incredibly large for all the bands to follow them. Without the Pixies, massive bands like Weezer, Nirvana and Radiohead would have all sounded drastically different.

My own personal Pixies experiences cut deep as well. They were the first real "indie" band that I got into, mostly because all my friends at school liked them and I was tired of not understanding their conversations (and God bless them for that). After a childhood spent listening to classic rock and pop, the Pixies gave me just enough melody to go with their yelping, pounding drums, screeching guitars and surrealistic imagery to teach me how to find beauty in dissonance and open my mind to more challenging music (and God bless THEM for that). In this installment of Covering Our Bases we look at the best of the released Pixes covers as a way to remember the musical capital-G "greatness" of the band as well as their absolute love of fun a music. Enjoy!

**On Warmer Music Exclusive Premiere**  

On Warmer Music's Summer 2012 Mix

Now the thing about summer mixes is that no matter what you chose, you're guaranteed to have more good songs that you had to leave off than you could include. For someone like me, this can be vastly frustrating unless you can make yourself see it as ultimately liberating - no matter what you're gonna have to skip things so you might as well just pick what you like. It's an incredibly rich vein from which to mine pop culture as youth, America, writers and nostalgia all tend to trade strongly in summer images. Everyone loves either reliving their past glories or just reveling in the warm bounties of their present situation.

Within this mix you will hear: an "r" rolled for over five seconds, complaints about work, an ode to insects, more horns that you might expect, a great Irish song called "Dancing In The Moonlight" NOT by Van Morrison, a mind-blowing unreleased Mountain Goats song, Wilco get raunchy(ish) and probably some people expressing fondness for increased amounts of sunshine. Enjoy!