Various Artists - epic ten
When Sharon Van Etten’s second album, epic dropped in 2010, only a year after her debut, the response was
surprisingly muted. Although critics noted the strength of its lyricism,
composition, and delivery most held back from praising the album as the
masterpiece it was. Even now, with five records under her belt epic remains a cult favorite, an album
that is almost no one’s entry point and that few people preferred. Regardless, the
album is an important one in Van Etten’s discography. It was her first album on
a proper label, New York’s Ba Da Bing, her first album recorded with a full
band, and arguably the first album to begin recruiting her fan base.
For the album’s tenth anniversary, a surprisingly disparate
group of musicians have gotten together to cover each one of epic’s seven tracks for Ba Da Bing. The
result is a great triumph, a living testament to the strength of these songs
and the nature of the ongoing relationship between musicians and the art they
create. Each track is straightforward in its delivery, but each is nonetheless
filtered through the guise of the musician covering it. IDLES provides a
refined but brutally upfront spin on “Peace Signs”, Justin Vernon and Aaron
Dessner’s Big Red Machine take on “A Crime” and add a bombastic Spanish touch
and Lucinda Williams brings “Save Yourself” to a devastating new level.
But coming off the landmark Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple’s contribution, “Love More” may
have been the most hotly anticipated. Notably, Apple lends that light,
percussive sound from her last album to a song that seemed impenetrably mournful
in Van Etten’s hands. The track’s instrumentals cascade back and forth against
multi-tracked harmonies, bringing the album to an almost celebratory conclusion.
On “Love More” Apple evokes a sound so full and revelatory, that it transforms
the once sparse track into one evoking the union that makes a compilation like
this possible.
The strength of epic
ten stems not just from the quality of the performances, but from the care
that each artist put into their contribution. Like any great compilation, these
songs are measured calculations at improving on the originals and creating an
album that works as a succinct whole. epic
remains Van Etten’s best album, but epic
ten does its best at eliciting the awestruck reverence that countless
musicians feel towards it.
~7.0
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