A band built on dub reggae, cool jazz, German experimental rock and film soundtracks collaborating with an alt-country singer-songwriter straight out of Faulkner’s Southern Gothic stories sounds weird enough alone. But Tortoise and Will Oldham of Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s decision to cover everyone from Elton John to Bruce Springsteen to Devo together across an entire album is even more bizarre. Naturally, the results are mixed on The Brave and the Bold, and while only the most hardcore fans will love it, the few brave enough to give it a listen will find more than a couple worthwhile tracks.
For the most part, the covers work best on the most unfamiliar songs, for which the listener has no expectations. John’s “Daniel” sounds like a minimalist experiment recorded at the bottom of a swimming pool, and Devo’s “That’s Pop!” crashes and burns immediately. For the very open-minded, their reading of “It’s Expected I’m Gone” by the Minutemen overcomes its deathly-slow pace to salvage some of the original’s anarchic free-jazz inspiration, and the unrecognizable prog-rock take on “Thunder Road” actually slides along on a pretty funky groove once its sheer weirdness wears off. The best songs stick closer to the Bonnie Prince’s melodic, softer side, as on Don Williams’ “Pancho” and Melanie’s “Some Say,” and having no idealized original to compare them certainly doesn’t hurt.
Unfortunately, there are more misses than hits here, and the whole thing comes off as a drunkenly conceived vanity project between two very talented artists spending one long, inebriated night in Tortoise’s basement. Chicago’s post-rock darlings have been slipping quietly towards obsolescence since their 1997 magnum opus Millions Now Living Will Never Die, and anyone interested in these musicians would do better to pick up that album, or Oldham’s Superwolf from last year. Taking this album from inside-joke to public release might have been too brave and bold a move even for the fans.
