Seen as a spiritual successor to Swell Tone’s Summer of Sad comp on Z Tapes, the release features takes on tracks by everyone from Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young to Björk, Mazzy Star and even Mr Rogers. Better yet, all proceeds are going to Homeward Bound Animal Rescue, which gives dogs a second chance at life. So when not support the release and relax in the knowledge that you are helping a good cause too?

The release is ostensibly one of love songs, but such a description belies the depth and ambiguity of emotions on offer. Opening the album, Basement Revolver gloss a layer of melancholy sweetness over Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’, subtle percussion and winding guitar allowing Chrisy Hurn’s vocals to come to the fore. Changing tack completely, Anna McClellan takes on ‘Dear Someone’ by Gillian Welch, transforming the original into a romantic piano song that sounds haunted by a sense of long-lost nostalgia, as if it’s floating across a quiet room from a war-time gramophone.

This diversity continues across the rest of the compilation. Yes these are all love songs, but stylistically no two sound quite alike. From Lucy Stone’s heartfelt guitar ballad (a contemporary update of Bonnie Raitt’s ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’) to the gentle droning pulse and ghostly vocals of Ora Cogan’s Björk cover, the album twists and turns through styles and emotions, from naked declarations to heart-broken longing to that lingering wistful feeling that’s woven into the fabric of things. There’s no sugary Hollywood sentiment here, rather love in its true, maddening form, so closely related to pain and sadness as to make the distinction obsolete.

The mood is perhaps best captured in Rosie Tucker‘s singular take on Connie Converse’s ‘How Sad, How Lovely’, a track which manages to hold tender beauty and creeping loss in the same hand. “How sad, how lovely,” go Converse’s lyrics. “How short, how sweet / to see the sunset / at the end of a street.” To take notice of the small wonders of the world is to notice their slow dissolution, but to take no notice at all is to already have died.

Sixteen Jackies lift the mood with a bouncy rendition of Pete Townsend’s ‘Let My Love Open The Door’, before Honey Moon arrived with their sultry take on ‘Lovefool’ by The Cardigans. Both tracks come with a technicolour finish, their sounds so lush and textured that you can wrap yourself within them, which juxtaposes well with Porridge Radio‘s stripped back version of Neil Young’s ‘Only Love Can Take Your Heart’. However, despite the track’s stark simplicity, the earnest tone and authentic delivery forms an enveloping texture of its own, radiating warmth and a kind of nostalgic grace.

The collection ends with a a hushed and intimate cover of Mr Rogers song ‘It’s You I Like’ by Ings, Inge Chiles delivering Rogers’s trademark earnestness and sentimentality in a near-whisper. The gently plucked guitar keeps its voice down too, leading to a finale as quiet and peaceful as it is suffused with feeling.

Summer of Love is out now digitally and on cassette, and you can get it from Bandcamp.

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Ashworth has just released Plastic Owen Band, a new “album” of covers, demos, compilation tracks and rarities produced between 2011 and 2014. The covers include Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bill Withers, Neil Young and even Casiotone’s own ‘Natural Light’.’Natural Light’ is classic Ashworth, a low-key, yearning song for a lost love. It is has lines like this:

“I got some news on you from a friend
you’re in Charlotte again
teaching Spanish at high school

he said you’re going by Joy
you cut your hair like a boy
& you don’t talk to your old friends

I found a picture from before the fight
we’re in natural light
& you’re sitting on my lap
like everything’s alright”

There’s also a remix of Advance Base’s ‘Summer Music’ (featuring Julie Byrne, who we wrote about here) which appeared on the aforementioned A Shut-In’s Prayer. It’s a great illustration of how a change of name has not meant a change of direction (or quality for that matter).

“There’s no comfort in sympathy
she’s upstate with her family
I’m still at the same address
I still believe I could love her best”

It also has a bizarre video in which Ashworth reveals himself to be a little fuzzy blue guy, a longlost inhabitant of Sesame Street.

Plastic Owen Band also has some rather nice instrumental tracks that show that Ashworth’s talents extend far beyond song writing. Advance Base has an album of them here, if you would like to hear more.

You can grab Plastic Owen Band on a pay-what-you-can basis right now.

P.S. If you’re not familiar with Ashworth’s work then please put that right immediately.

The post Advance Base – Plastic Owen Band appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. Borrowed Tune (Neil Young Cover) – Field Report*
2. Someone Like You (Adele Cover) – Shipwrecks & Island of Misfit Toys
3. Good Good Things (The Descendents Cover) – Edsel
4. Ceremony (New Order Cover) – Chromatics
5. Angels (The XX Cover) – KOTKEE
6. Dark Eyes (Bob Dylan Cover) – Dirty Projectors
7. If I Had No Place To Fall (Townes Van Zandt Cover) – Nathaniel Rateliff^
8. Dancing in the Dark (Bruce Springsteen Cover) – Praything
9. From the Soil, a Violin (Goose Lake Cover) – Wand (formerly First Nations)
10. I Can’t Talk About It (El Perro Del Mar Cover) – His Clancyness
11. Such Great Heights (Postal Service Cover) – Iron & Wine
12. From The Morning (Nick Drake Cover) – Pickering Pick
13. Night Moves (Bob Seger Cover) – Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson^
14. Hang Me, Oh Hang Me (Traditional) – Daniel Rossen
15. My Dreams Have Withered and Died (Richard and Linda Thompson Cover) – Angel Olsen & Marissa Nadler
16. No Ordinary Love (Sade Cover) – The Rosebuds
17. You Aint Seen Nothing Yet (Bachman Turner Overdrive Cover) – Yo La Tengo
18. Indian Sunburn (Schooner Cover) – Wesley Wolfe
19. Ohio (Damien Jurado Cover) – Neil Halstead*
20. I See a Darkness (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy Cover) – Johnny Cash

* = taken from Fuel/Friends Chapel Sessions
^ = taken from Daytrotter Sessions

Please remember to support the artists! We’ve included links on the tracklisting that will take you somewhere more specific for each band so be sure to check out their original material. Also visit Daytrotter and Fuel/Friends, the sessions they do are well worth your time.

The Covers Mix: Volume #6 from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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