Dig ‘Em?
JEFF The Brotherhood, a band of brothers from Tennessee, have recently released a new EP of covers entitled Dig the Classics. Now, covers are an art form in and of themselves. It is hard to take a song and change it enough so that it is a reflection of the original tune while still doing something different: Counting Crows were able to do this with their cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” and so did The Dixie Chicks’ cover of Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide.”
JEFF The Brotherhood, however, does not possess this talent. Their covers just fall flat. At first it seemed like they were trying to make the covers harder, adding a more metal sound, and some extra distortion. This type of tonality is especially prevalent on their cover of The Pixies’ “Gouge Away.” But, even with adding the tiny bit of distortion, there’s nothing memorable about these covers. They’re not bad. You won’t hate listening to them, but that’s about it. This is the kind of album that could have just stayed on a YouTube channel. The covers would get maybe a couple hundred views, and maybe they’d be shared in small circles, but turning it into a full EP just seems overkill.
Not to mention, the songs that they chose to cover don’t feel cohesive as an album. The songs seem to be from all over the place, from The Pixies to Jeff Beck, a cover that in particular too, doesn’t stand out at all. Jeff Beck is listed at number five of Rolling Stone’s top 100 guitarists of all time. That means if you’re going to cover Beck, it needs to go big or go home, and their cover of “Totally Confused” can leave the listeners totally confused as to why the band covered it. Overall, the album is just flat. Under other circumstances, JEFF the Brotherhood may be a great group, but this EP of solely covers just doesn’t work in their favor.
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