Covers And Others

Covers and Others showcases the work of eight up-and-coming Northern Ireland bands. The general genre is straight-up rock, with many of the featured bands comprising guitar, vocals, bass and drums. Immortal made a clever marketing decision by including two tracks from each band: one is a cover version of a well-known song, the other is the band's own creation - a highly palatable way to introduce newly recorded artists.

Jerkin Crocus kick things off with a pretty good shot at 'White Light/White Heat', the classic Velvet Underground song, while the next band, Jude, apply their male voices to Debbie Harry's 'Heart of Glass'. Jude's own track 'Jane' reveals a Therapy?-esque sound - a most laudable influence. Next Leslie Rich and the Rocket Soul Choir do their stuff to 'Holiday in Cambodia' of Dead Kennedys fame. Rich's 'Teeth & By Skin' shows that the singer/songwriter has real promise. Things get quite bizarre with Emily Ryder's slow off-key version of 'Baby Love', immortalised forever by The Supremes.

For me, the best tracks on Covers and Others are by Beeswax and The Sabrejets. The former do a cool, slick, danceable version of Patti Smith's beautiful 'Dancing Barefoot', keeping standards up with their own 'Ostrich Man', which introduces sampled techy sounds to dark brooding vocals and guitar. Meanwhile The Sabrejets' own track is actually better than their cover, with an Elvis-type voice crooning over slide guitar, making them Northern Ireland's answer to The Stray Cats. The Holsteins' tracks feature the only female on the album, who sings a good straightforward version of Kirsty Macoll's 'They Don't Know' in a sweet high-pitched voice.

Unfortunately, in the case of quite a few of the bands featured on this compilation, their original track sounds a little thin following so closely on the heels of cover-classics. But Covers and Others still does its job of bringing some of Northern Ireland's finest talent to our attention.