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Album Details

• Artist: Various Artists
• Album: Cover Your Tracks
• Label: Deep Elm
• Year of Release: 2007
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: mschmitt on 2007-06-09

I never know how to review these compilations. I always end up just reverting to a play-by-play account of each song as it pops up in my CD player speakers. Not this time. This time, the game is on. It’s a competition now, between the players contained within Deep Elm’s Cover Your Tracks compilation—who will best cover older band’s work? I will (try to) keep score, and we shall see who –when all is said and done – comes out the champion of this compilation.

First off, some notable players. London-based Fightstar is one of the most notable Deep Elm players, and has recently released a quite delicious LP entitled They Liked You Better When You Were Dead. They will be covering “The Days I Recall Being Wonderful” by Last Days of April. Sweden’s Sounds like Violence has been making a name for their brand of post-punk emo rock with their debut release, With Blood On My Hands. They will play an unreleased original track, which puts them at a considerable advantage over their adversaries. Finally, Slowride of Lawrence, Kansas has been dishing out a blend of indie and alternative rock in the vein of the Foo Fighters since their 2002 debut As I Survive the Suicide Bomber. They’re going to need those strong influences as they tackle “Fishing The Sky” by The Appleseed Cast.

Desert City Soundtrack gets the ball rolling with “Marigold & Patchwork,” originally by The Appleseed Cast. While they start off strong with a piano ballad backed by apparently confused distorted guitars, they lose ground later in the track as apparent electric drills barge their way into the studio and ruin an otherwise good track. Tough luck Desert City Soundtrack! Small Arms Dealer from Long Island pitch out “Today I Discovered the World” by Cross My Heart and while they generally nail the appropriate instrumentals (they earn strong points with a superb guitar solo), their half-screamed vocals sound quite poor. Some other strong attempts come from Eleven Minutes Away and their rendition of Camber’s “Hollowed-Out.” If only that song were good in the first place. Burns Out Bright also score well with Pop Unknown’s “This Guy’s Ready For Bed,” which may just earn them a clutch victory.

The heavy-hitters come to the plate! Fightstar take a bite out of “The Days I Recall Being Wonderful” as Slowride pull out their acoustic tricks for The Appleseed Cast’s “Fishing The Sky.” While the acoustic instrumentals may just have Fightstar beat, Slowride’s vocals leave too much room for improvement. Fightstar has it! But then there’s Sounds Like Violence’s original track “Noone Knows What We’ve Got” to contend with. Fortunately for Fightstar, there’s a reason this track has been unreleased up until now. The off-kilter stumbling (both in vocal and instrumental quality) easily put Fightstar at the top of this game.

However, because Deep Elm pays me good money (not really), I must declare Nathaniel Sutton and his hidden track “Deep Elm Is A Friend Of Mine” as the overall winner, because it’s damn true that “Deep Elm is my favorite label of all time / Every CD they release truly shines.”

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