Sam Beam & Ben Bridwell | Sing Into My Mouth

You probably know the voices behind this interesting cover album with the pretty bizarre name. The title comes from the Talking Heads’ song that they re-created to lead off this batch of songs so they can’t take full credit for that. What Beam can take credit for is his ever changing musical project (but not really a band?) Iron & Wine that if nothing else you know for his lo-fi cover of the Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” featured in the movie Garden State, an M & M’s commercial, and college dorms throughout the nation in 2004. In the decade since, Beam has released several albums that are more blues, jazz, and especially ’70s style pop oriented than any of his faint, singer-songwriter stuff that he’s still associated with. Bridwell meanwhile is the lead singer and guitarist for the indie group Band of Horses. You may know them for their songs “The Funeral” and “Is There a Ghost”which were similarly used in every commercial, movie, video game, student produced stop-motion film, kindergarten graduation, and most likely, even a few actual funerals. That will do for introductions.

The only thing left to figure out is how these two were introduced to each other. As the story goes, Beam was friends with Bridwell’s older brother and they bonded over music when they were younger. I can buy it. My brother is an asshole and his friends were probably even worse, but growing up, I remember being allowed to tag along and listen to music and it actually being one of my better memories. Luckily for you my lack of musical talent means your lack of Nirvana and Soundgarden cover albums presented by me. Beam and Bridwell with their decent enough talents decided after over a decade of working on their own stuff that they would get together and put out an album. The result is Sing Into My Mouth and it shows their more varied shared influences, covering songs from Bonnie Raitt to JJ Cale to Sade. Also…it’s not too bad.

The advantage this covers album has over many, at least for me, is that I’m barely familiar with the original songs. With most remakes it’s impossible for the listener to not compare it to previous versions; versions that we are often attached to and prefer whether they would be objectively better than the new versions or not. Yes, a few of these songs I have heard before but none enough to create a commanding fear that Beam & Bridwell would mangle them. The album actually has a more cohesive feel than what would be expected with two musicians collaborating for the first time on a dozen songs that they didn’t actually write. They seem to focus not only on particular artists who dually influenced them but on extracting the more southern rock and country-folk elements found more on Band of Horses later stuff and on Iron & Wine songs like “Freedom Hangs Like Heaven”, “Free Until They Cut Me Down”, and “Red Dust”. While the last two albums Beam released veered toward full band arrangements and jazzy horn solos, Sing Into My Mouth eschews Steeley Dan for Neil Young and The Band. There also isn’t much resembling the indie rock that Bridwell uses to bread his butter; in fact the only way I would use the word indie in describing this album, is liking it the indie-folk of artists like Father John Misty. Actually after listening to their version of John Cale’s “You Know Me More Than I Know” I’m still not convinced that Misty didn’t sneak into the studio to sing lead vocals on that one.

“This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)”, a wonderfully ’80s song penned by David Byrne, is now an easy going folk song with pedal-steel replacing the odd ball Talking Heads guitar licks. “Done This One Before” on the other hand sounds pretty close to original by Ronnie Lane, which makes sense considering the sound they seem to be going for here is from that same early ’70s era. Other tracks like “Anyday Woman” (Bonnie Raitt), “Ab’s Song” (Marshall Tucker Band), and “Magnolia” (JJ Cale) were created in that same time and their new versions all do them justice; even if Sam and Ben’s “Magnolia” is not nearly as good as Cale’s. Even the new songs like El Perro Del Mar’s “God Knows” and Spiritualized’s “The Straight and Narrow” are basically retrofitted to match that sound. These two tracks sound a little more atmospheric but still fit with the rest of the songs that is more inspired roots rock of The Band than anything from the 2000s. Should I have used the Aughts there? No, because that’s a stupid sounding fucking name for a decade.

Not everything on Sing Into My Mouth works. The closer in particular, “Coyote”, tries to take a gimmicky folk song and turn it into a Band of Horses song. And it does make it there, just…poorly. It kind of just meanders between melodic and barely mediocre, making you ponder why they didn’t drop this for something more worthy of being the final track. The best thing I can say about that song is that tonally it doesn’t sound out of place. They really did a great job of picking a musical focus for this album and not straying regardless of the what the original songs did. If Beam and Bridwell decide to write their own songs together for a release this certainly wouldn’t be a bad starting point. They have pretty good harmonies as demonstrated on their covers of the soul favorite “Am I a Good Man” and the David Gilmour single “No Way Out of Here”. And they love that sweet, sweet pedal-steel. Plus anyone that can make Sade’s sultry (is there ever a better way to describe her music?) “Bullet Proof Soul” work well with the rest of these songs has enough talent and creativity to not stop at just releasing cover songs.

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Bake

I'm nothing. Maybe less than nothing. I also write.

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