Listen to the mix via the player below, and be sure to check out the other volumes which can be found here, and are available on our 8tracks page.

Tracklisting:

1. Midnight City (M83 Cover) – The Last Bison
2. Anthems For A Seveteen Year Old Girl (Broken Social Scene Cover) – Dancing Years
3. Goodbye Horses (Q Lazzarus Cover) – Hayden Thorpe & Jon Hopkins
4. Native American Summer (Beat Happening Cover) – Small Wonder
5. Semi-Charmed Life (Third Eye Blind Cover) – Frontier Ruckus
6. Passionate Kisses (Lucinda Williams Cover) – Shakey Graves
7. Do You Realize (The Flaming Lips Cover) – Fossil Collective
8. Crazy In Love (Beyonce Cover) – Melissa Laveaux
9. Car (Built To Spill Cover) – Emily Reo
10. Perfect Day (Lou Reed Cover) – Phosphorescent
11. Father & Daughter (Paul Simon Cover) – The River Has Many Voices
12. Blues Run the Game (Jackson C. Frank Cover) – Oscar Lush
13. In Spite of Ourselves (John Prine Cover) – Kyle Morton & Danielle Sullivan
14. Around and Around (John Denver Cover) – Mountain Man
15. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams Cover) – Fog Lake
16. The Way the Whole Thing Ends (Gillian Welch Cover) – Night Beds
17. I Am Not Waiting Anymore (Field Report Cover) – Blind Boys of Alabama
18. Will the Circle be Unbroken? (Traditional) – Emily Lacy
19. Oblivion (Grimes Cover) – Wilsen
20. Teenage Spaceship (Smog Cover) – How To Dress Well
21. Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song) (Dave van Ronk Cover) – Oscar Isaac

The Covers Mix: Volume #10 from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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The album builds upon the band’s two previous albums (2008’s Orion Songbook and 2010’s Deadmalls and Nightfalls – both of which I would highly recommend), and confirms the ability to make sun-soaked Americana with a literary lyrical bent. Indeed the album’s lyrics are extremely dense – coming in at over 5,500 words – and paint a vivid picture of growing up in suburban Detroit during the 90s. The album artwork serves to capture the themes on display and does a better job than I could possibly hope to with words. The era evoked will certainly hold greater appeal to those of a certain generation and I’d guess that if your birthday falls between 1980 and 1990 then you will identify with a lot of the lyrics, from sun bleached VHS tapes to sports coaches to the birthday parties of friends and school mates. This is not simply a chronicle of childhood, however. A lot of the lyrics are tinged with nostalgia and a sort of wistful sadness. This is probably best illustrated by sampling a few of the lines from the album:

There’s a dead world locked in a Nintendo 64
In some divorced friend’s mom’s apartment bedroom drawer

(From Open It Up)

Or:

The shrink-wrapped cosmetics and cardboard aesthetics of department store picture frame inserts that my 
Mother keeps under a sink in a cupboard with her high school diploma and it hurts to try
To keep all our treasures intact for forever

<a href=“http://music.frontierruckus.com/track/dealerships” data-mce-href=“http://music.frontierruckus.com/track/dealerships”>Dealerships by Frontier Ruckus</a>

I would advise that this brand of folk or Americana is not for everyone. Frontier Ruckus have not attempted to jump on the bandwagon of popular contemporary folk acts and tried to make foot-stomping, sing-a-long choruses that could grace huge venues and festival headline slots. But this is not a criticism, in fact I mean it more as a complement. There is remarkable restraint and real feeling here. I found it very difficult when listening to the album to draw direct comparisons, although I think that it would be fair to cite  The Mountain Goats, particularly The Sunset Tree, with it’s evocation of coming of age and being a teenager in America. Other artists that come to mind are John K. Samson’s The Weakerthans and Will Sheff’s Okkervil River (particularly their earlier albums) and Decemberists, mainly because of the literary style lyrics, which you could almost read as poetry from the liner notes.

The band have also released a video for the closing track, Careening Catalog Immemorial, which was directed by David Meiklejohn and again captures the album’s aesthetic pretty nicely. Watch it below:

Europeans can pre-order the album from Loose Music, while North Americans can get the album in a beautiful double vinyl package, on CD, or by digital download via Quite Scientific. The band are also about to embark on a European tour, including several stops in the UK. Check out the dates below:

01 Mar – Windmill, LONDON
02 Mar – Burgerweeshuis, DEVENTER
04 Mar – Stengade, COPENHAGEN
05 Mar – Pustervik, GOTHENBERG
06 Mar – Debaser Slussen, STOCKHOLM
07 Mar – Debaser, MALMO
08 Mar – Kulturhaus 73, HAMBURG
09 Mar – Underground, COLOGNE
10 Mar – Fachwerk Gievenbeck, MUNSTER
12 Mar – Rote Fabrink, ZURICH
13 Mar – Cardinal, SCHAFFHAUSEN
14 Mar – Silencio, PARIS
16 Mar – Start The Bus, BRISTOL
17 Mar – Whelans, DUBLIN
19 Mar – Ruby Lounge, MANCHESTER
20 Mar – Bloc Bar, GLASGOW
21 Mar – Fibbers, YORK
22 Mar – Jericho Tavern, OXFORD
23 Mar – The Borderline, LONDON

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