What's more fun than singing your favorite songs? It's the basic tenet that accounts for the entire karaoke industry, the success of Rock Band, and the never-ending career of Rod Stewart-- though, naturally, the enjoyment one derives from singing their favorite songs is often inversely related to an audience's desire to hear them do it. Still, that hasn't stopped countless artists from resorting to the all-covers album when they find themselves at a career crossroads or in search of renewed inspiration. When executed effectively-- through savvy song selection, inventive rearrangements, and authoritative vocal performances that allow the singer to reclaim the song as their own-- the all-covers album can introduce veteran artists to new audiences (Johnny Cash's American Recordings series), open up new avenues for future exploration (Nick Cave's Kicking Against the Pricks), or deconstruct an enigma (David Bowie's Pin Ups). For the most part, however, they just feel like a private, practice-space indulgence that didn't really need to become a public commodity.
Supergrass are at an all-covers-album point in their careers-- with 16 years and six studio albums under their belts, the band have experienced a gradual side down the UK charts in recent years (with 2008's Diamond Hoo Ha barely cracking the Top 20), and now exist in that middle-aged purgatory between NME buzz band and MOJO lifetime-achievement award recipients. They're also entering this decade as independent recording artists, following a split from long-time label Parlophone/EMI. So you can totally understand founding members Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey (with producer Nigel Godrich in tow) wanting to cast those uncertainties aside and get back to where they once belonged via their all-covers project the HotRats. But what seems like a perfectly swell concept for a surprise gig at the local pub-- where sloshed spectators can join in on the hero worship-- feels much more suspect when reified into a permanent record.
For one, Turn Ons' song selection doesn't reveal anything we didn't already know about Coombes and Goffey-- they have and always will be dedicated pop scholars mining the historical classic-rock contiunuum, from Ray Davies and Syd Barrett to David Bowie and Roxy Music to Elvis Costello and The Cure (all of whom have signature tracks featured here). But the real problem with Turn Ons isn't so much the predictable sources as the fact that the HotRats don't really do a whole lot with them. The minor touch-ups heard here don't exactly constitute a bold attempt to put their own stamp on the material: the Velvet Undergrond's "I Can't Stand It" is given an electric-boogie boost befitting of the Velvets' 1970s glam-rock progeny, the Cure's "Love Cats" gets a beefed-up swing beat, while the punk-rock classics (Gang of Four's "Damaged Goods" and a nudge-wink, self-reflexive take on the Sex Pistols' "EMI") are powered by acoustic guitars instead of electric. The HotRats are most successful at transforming Squeeze's "Up the Junction" into a piano-ballad reverie, but such inspired gestures are outnumbered by the more ill-advised augmentations: a version of Roxy Music's "Love Is the Drug" that neuters the original's discotheque groove into sexless spasms, or an otherwise straight-forward take on Bowie's "Queen Bitch" that slathers on an ornate string arrangement completely at odds with the song's streetwise swagger.
Underscoring the ineffectuality of the exercise is the fact that Coombes mostly opts for mimicry over personal reinterpretation, adopting a brooding Jim Morrison baritone for the Doors' "The Crystal Ship", a deadpan Lou Reed drawl on "I Can't Stand It", a high-register Robert Smith wail on "Love Cats" and so on. Granted, there is one notable exception to Turn Ons' obvious curation and impersonation: an overhaul of the Beastie Boys' "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (to Party!)" that liberates the song from its rap-rock foundation and recasts it as a whimsical, paisley-hued outtake from The Who Sell Out. But while the novelty works on the verses, it leaves Coombes unsure of what to do with the chorus, thereby sapping the song of its greatest attribute: the opportunity to shout along with the titular slogan.
Perhaps Supergrass' upcoming album Release the Drones-- due later this year-- will provide a more convincing justification for the HotRats experiment, assuming the process of reacquainting themselves with their formative influences is intended to rejuvenate the band and return them to their I Should Coco/In It for the Money heyday. But as it stands, the only real surprise with the HotRats is that they named themselves after a Frank Zappa album that has no other bearing on the proceedings. And truth be told, it actually would've been a lot more interesting to hear Coombes and Goffey try their hand at some 10-minute jazz-rock jams than another note-for-note version of "Pump It Up".
