Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Tuesday Tunes: Radio 1's Live Lounge Volume 3

It’s January, so it must be time for Tuesday Tunes to do the annual* Live Lounge CD review. Obviously everyone else did it in about November when it came out, but I was kinda busy that month.

Anyone who cares should already know the formula: 40 tracks of exclusive live performances (the clue is in the title), consisting in roughly equal parts of one-off cover versions and recent hits.

This is the third CD of Live Lounge sets from Jo Whiley's Radio 1 show, and I'd like to say the standard keeps getting higher, but unfortunately I think the reverse is true. Although that could be because I've not had the chance to listen to Jo Whiley much lately, so a lot of the acts on the latest compilation may as well be strange new life forms.

That said, it is still worth... well, whatever it's going for on amazon right now, and the mix of artists is as ecelctic as ever. In the 'songs you know' category, we have Duffy (Mercy), Adele (Chasing Pavements), Scouting for Girls (Elvis Ain’t Dead), The Streets (Blinded by the Lights), and Athlete's Wires, quite possibly the best song ever.

The cover versions are always more interesting, and this time round, among others, you can hear:
Dizzee Rascal’s reworking of The Ting Tings' That’s Not My Name;
REM doing Munich;
The Script doing Eninem's Lose Yourself;
Kate Nash doing an Arctic Monkeys cover, which rocks mainly because its Kate Nash;
Goldfrapp’s laid back version of It’s Not Over Yet;
and Bat for Lashes (no, me neither) throwing some 80s into the mix with a cover of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams.


*Volume 2 was reviewed in April 2008. Volume 1 wasn't reviewed.

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