Modest Mouse and My Morning Jacket have recorded the latest entries in a Neil Young covers series so vast and rapidly expanding that you are probably recording your own contribution right now.The two bands’ takes on “Barstool Blues” and “Like a Hurricane” appear on volumes two and three of the Heart of Gold compilation series, which arrive both at once on November 6.
Modest Mouse teamed with Califone for “Barstool Blues,” MMJ recruited the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for “Like a Hurricane,” and both of the resulting songs are below.If your appetite for Neil Young covers remains unquenched, the latest volumes include previously released takes on “Helpless” and “After the Gold Rush” by King Princess and Draco Rosa, respectively.Contributions from MJ Lenderman, Kurt Vile, Lucinda Williams, and Ben Gibbard are still to come, all benefitting California’s Bridge School.
Fiona Apple and Courtney Barnett were among the participants in the first volume.Isaac Brock said in a press release:Getting to do a cover of one of Neil’s songs on a project like this matters both because it gets to be helpful for an important cause like The Bridge School, and because it’s actually attached to the person whose song we are covering.It’s really… well, it’s a stressful honor.
The stakes seem a little higher.I like that.I had initially chosen and started working on a cover of ‘Cortez the Killer’ before I realized that, in order to pull this off the way I’d like to, it was going to take me a thousand hours.
Then it struck me: there is a song that I like just as much and find personally more relatable, ‘Barstool Blues.’ This was a song I could really sing my teeth into.On top of being such a catchy song, it was something that I felt more of a mental and emotional connection to than ‘Cortez’ anyway, which I have more of a “ historical” emotional connection to.The next challenge any time you cover a song you’ve heard so many times is ...