War Child is presenting Heroes, a cover compilation of a slightly different nature. With this set of songs, the artist that is being covered hand picked the song and the artist that would cover it. A very interesting project indeed. It has worked out probably even better than War Child's wildest hopes. Heroes comes off almost perfect and showcasing a wide range of artists and styles.

The album opens with Beck covering Bob Dylan's "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" and comes away with one of the strongest outings from Beck in a while. An obvious choice for the Kinks to choose The Kooks to do "Victoria" still worked out. A lively and spirited version. The Hold Steady can do no wrong and for them to do a Bruce Springsteen song is so appropriate ("Atlantic City"). A surprise highlight for me was the Joy Division classic "Transmission" being redone by Hot Chip. It's hard to improve on this one but this electro group did just that. Another great choice was Lily Allen with the help of Mick Jones doing "Straight To Hell". I thought Leonard Cohen choosing his song, Adam to cover "Take This Waltz" was a bit of a cop out but you know, Adam choose to do this song in Spanish giving it a completely different feel than that of his fathers version. I wasn't expecting much from Yeah Yeah Yeah's doing The Ramones' "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" but it worked out quite nicely. 

Not surprisingly, the most creative project on Heroes is the title track, the David Bowie classic covered by the enigmatic TV On The Radio. This is definitely one of the many highlights on the album. U2's choice of Elbow covering "Running To Stand Still" was probably the most appropriate out of all of these collaborations. Garvey puts so much emotion into the wonderfully overlooked classic. The piano accompaniment lends itself perfectly to "Running". Duffy does an impressive and unique approach of McCartney's "Live And Let Die".

I would say the weakest song out of the 16 is the Scissor Sisters covering Roxy Music's "Do The Strand". It's not all that bad but just one of the least inspired songs of the set. Peaches cover of Iggy Pop's "Search And Destroy" is next on the list but a tad more imaginative. The Franz Ferdinand cover of Blondie's "Call Me" could have been a little more personalized.

Overall, Heroes is just a magnificent project, one that deserves you plunking down the $10 to purchase. Not only does the revenue go to a good cause (providing humanitarian support to children affected by war) but you get 16 great tracks. Even if you only enjoy a couple of these songs, it's still worth the purchase.