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George Harrison was always known as "the quiet one" of the Fab Four. Yet his most notable contributions to the Beatles canon have a way of cutting just as deep as any Lennon and McCartney composition. So many of Harrison's songs - especially those that never made it to a Beatles album, but did make it to Harrison's solo 1970 release, All Things Must Pass - seem to weep with such a wistful, yet impregnable, melancholy.
Each ballad offers a glimpse at what was going on behind Harrison's, by that stage, near-constant glare or frown. The distinct but always intertwined factions of love and loss fight an almost constant battle in Harrison's most meaningful songs; listening to Harrison's music is and shall always remain a bittersweet experience. It makes sense then that My Morning Jacket front man Jim James (going here by the pseudonym Yim Yames) should attempt to tackle a short selection of George Harrison classics in an album entitled Tribute To...
My Morning Jacket's work, stretching back as far as 1999's The Tennessee Fire, takes many a stroll down the classically bittersweet alt-country road. And despite their dalliances with rock, the Kentucky band are best when they comply with their country-meets-indie roots. My Morning Jacket's thoughtful, plaintive ballads somehow manage to circumvent both the eardrum and the parts of the brain that reason, preferring instead to instantly trigger off the chemical releases that tell you nothing more than the fact that you're hopelessly in love.
The band's comfortable grasp of pathos is helped by their reliance on reverb to create church hall-like atmospherics. Into this haunting place soars Jim James' spectacular soprano-come-falsetto voice, and out of it emerges beautiful moments such as Golden from the album, It Still Moves. Although Harrison wasn't nearly as vocally blessed, his somnolent music does resound with the same kind of vapourous ambiance that My Morning Jacket are famous for, largely thanks to Phil Spector's classic Wall Of Sound treatment. And so, the idea of Jim James covering George Harrison doesn't seem so far fetched.
But tribute albums are always a waste of time, right? Well no, not always. Some will have fond things to say about the tribute to Kurt Weill, entitled Lost In The Stars; Take Me Home, a record made in memory of John Denver; and the Gram Parsons tribute, Return Of The Grievous Angel. The best cover songs, however, are those that show deference to the original writer, but not too much. Think about the Jimi Hendrix treatment of All Along The Watchtower, the Jeff Buckley reinterpretation of Hallelujah or Nirvana's unplugging of The Man Who Sold The World. Quite a few will forget or don't even realise they were written by other people.
While no one is likely to confuse George Harrison with Jim James, there can be no doubt that this well-chosen set of six songs glows with the unmistakable sonic hues of My Morning Jacket. There are two Beatles-era tracks, album opener Long, Long, Long (taken from The White Album) and Love You To (taken from Revolver). Both sound like new tracks. The former is stripped of the original's drum crashes and crescendo finale, leaving the listener with simple acoustic guitar strumming and the bewitching, harmonious soprano of Jim James. The latter exchanges a sitar for a banjo and is slowed right down; a fairly upbeat Beatles song is transformed into a lovelorn elegy that gradually builds its intensity verse by verse, and is nothing short of magnificent.
In between these two tracks sits Behind That Locked Door - one of four tracks taken from All Things Must Pass. Ironically, the remake isn't nearly the country song that the original was, with the lap steel now a barely audible background instrument. Again, the pace is slower and the mood is more reflective, reinforcing the quality of James' angelic voice. So too is My Sweet Lord, which repeatedly swells, adding layer upon layer of reverb-strewn harmony.
Fleet Foxes lovers and disciples will particularly enjoy James' versions of The Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll) and a beautifully elegiac All Things Must Pass. Robin Pecknold may have honed the ability to sing as though he were surrounded by rolling green fields and snow-capped mountains, but he would surely doff his hat to his obvious precursor, Jim James.
Cover albums can be forgettable and throwaway, but not this one. This is a truly memorable and worthwhile tribute to the quiet Beatle.
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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees
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