Tortoise & Bonnie "Prince" Billy - The Brave And The Bold

7.5 – USA – 2005

The collaboration of the Chicago post-rockers and the Louisville alt-folkie for this album of covers is both odd and yet completely expected. Though they play rather different genres, they do both move in the same circles (David Pajo being the Kevin Bacon in this equation), and the matching ethos yet divergent aesthetic should at the very least produce interesting results.

The results are somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand this is a Tortoise record, so everything is very tightly arranged and elaborately produced, and yet, on the other hand, it all feels rather half-assed with a whiff of “just having a lark” pervading the whole set. That’s not a criticism, so much as an observation; part of the appeal here, I think, is the idea of both these rather, ah, studied artists letting go and having a bit of fun.

The selections run an interesting gamut, but are largely concentrated in 1970s MORAOR. Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” gets a cosmic, minor-key reworking: with Tortoise’s synths and processed guitars transforming the car described in the song into some kind of spaceship (wings for wheels indeed). The Elton John standard “Daniel” and Don Williams’ “Pancho” are given straight readings by Bonnie “Prince” Billy that suggest a kind of dead-pan irony in their inclusion (recall that B”P”B once recorded a straight-ahead – and quite effective – cover of Tim McGraw’s ultra-schlocky “Just To See You Smile”). Two new-wave/punk covers – Devo’s “That’s Pep!” and The Minutemen’s “It’s Expected I’m Gone” – are highlights, the latter in particular being a welcome expansion of the sparse original (with a thundering beat by Tortoise lynchpin John McEntire). Most interesting of all, however, is the album’s opener, Milton Nascimento’s “Cravo É Canela”, which is fairly faithful to the original (perhaps the most similar cover on the record) with fuzz guitars replacing the whistling and Bonnie Billy yelping along in the original Portuguese.

Overall, Tortoise’s sound dominates the album and somewhat overshadows the vocals. As this from the latter part of Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s career, he opts here to sing properly rather than interestingly (I’ve always preferred his voice when it is raw and unbridled despite – or, perhaps, because of – the various imperfections). Still, though there are few clunkers (as is to be expected on such releases), the high spots manage to outweigh them.