Album Reviews

What possessed Amanda Palmer to cover Radiohead playing her "magic ukelele"? Who knows? Did this inspire Eddie Vedder to issue a ukelele-based record? What would Arthur Godfrey think of all of this (look him up if you're too young to know who he is)?

None of that matters really, it's just interesting speculating.

While there's a wonderfully retro-kitschy quality to the cover art, there's nothing kitschy about the performances as you'll hear on the opener "Fake Plastic Trees" from The Bends taken intimately at a lovingly modest pace.

Palmer is an evocative singer and takes deadly serious aim at these Radiohead favorites, giving them heartfelt, literal translations.

She caresses the minor chord melodies and wrings the full emotional content from each of the six tunes, backed on the final tune "Exit  Music (for a film") by cello, violins and viola.

Also covered are "No surprises" from OK Computer  (hard to believe this record is fourteen years old!), "High and Dry"  (also from The Bends), "Idioteque" from Kid A, Radiohead's most conventional song, "Creep" (which Palmer imbues with far more desperation than the young Thom Yorke could manage at the time—perhaps because, as the jacket reveals, Palmer was "hung over at the Berlin sound check from which it was listed) and finally from a live performance, a sombre cover of a sombre aforementioned song: "Exit Music (for a film)". At the song's climax, Palmer achieves Velvet Underground lift-off. 

A musical and sonic detour from the same old shit and certainly a disc Radiohead fans should definitely seek out. 

No doubt this was digitally recorded at a higher than CD resolution and transferred to disc from high resolution files, but  however this was done, it's still worth getting on colored vinyl at 45rpm. 

The Pallas 180g pressing was perfect. All vinyl, except for clear is "colored vinyl" so don't let the red color stop you!