Gold Sounds

While I was gone, I received an email from Brown Brothers Recordings reminding me that next month (9/27) they'll be releasing their album of jazz covers of Pavement tunes. The email also let us know that there is a new streaming cut from the album (titled Gold Sounds) on their website.

Being a huge Pavement fan, I've been following this project since I heard about it last spring. They've been occasionally changing the streaming tune on the site during that time so I've had the chance to hear their versions of "Summer Babe", "Stereo", "Platform Blues" and now, the current selection, "My First Mine". "Summer Babe" was easily the best of the four but "My First Mine" is pretty good too.

Just to clarify, Brown Brothers are the album's producers while the musicians are James Carter (reeds), Cyrus Chestnut (keys), Ali Jackson (percussion) and Reginald Veal (bass). I don't know shit about jazz besides the "Coltrane basics" but I'm looking forward to picking this thing up. So far, it has sounded pretty good.

I could nitpick about the track listing though:

1.Stereo
2.My First Mine
3.Cut Your Hair
4.Summer Babe
5.Blue Hawaiian
6.Here
7.Platform Blues
8.Trigger Cut

I'd much rather hear their interpretation of "Type Slowly" than "Blue Hawaiian" and "Forklift" might have been more interesting than "My First Mine". Or perhaps it would have been amusing to hear what they would have done with "5-4=Unity" which is Pavement's tribute to Dave Brubeck's "Take Five". Could they have done a jazz cover of it that would have shown both love for Brubeck's and Pavement's songs? It would have been the unique situation of covering two songs at once.

UPDATE: I got an email from Brown Brothers Recordings today letting me know that they did in fact record a version of "5-4=Unity" and that it would be released at a later date. According to them, it's a "real head turner".