What would make good songs sound like great songs? What turns rock classics into new sonic experiences? How do you make such songs bigger, heavier, more impactful perhaps even more fun? You give them the Bad Mary treatment, that’s how. And what does that mean? Well, everything that I have just described to you…do try to keep up.
Bad Mary has chosen 6 songs to re-imagine, reinvent, and re-polish…actually repolish is the wrong word for a band that revels in a low slung, scuzzy, grinding musical style, but you know what I mean. It kicks off with Blondie’s One Way Or Another, a song that lends itself perfectly to the Bad Mary makeover experience. But not everything found here is such an obvious fit. Although it turns out that Jefferson Airplane’s drug-addled anthem White Rabbit benefits from some razor-wire riffs and squalling six-string salvos. Who knew? Well, Bad Mary for one.
And if you think that is an odd selection, what follows might really flip your lid. Don’t You Want Me saw Human League fully embrace synth-pop after years of experimentation and Avant-gardening. Bad Mary shows how it could just have easily taken a different route and had the eyelinered Sheffield princes and princesses of pop opted for it, foot on the monitor, grinding rock and roll would have been equally justified.
There is even room for a poised and punchy, punk and roll version of the theme from Daria! (see above for details)
It’s a great album, one that balances a couple of more expected music selections with plenty of wonderfully unique choices and all of them give a new spin. And with another excursion into classic rock covers territory expected to follow shortly, there is a lot more of this sort of thing to look forward to. And that can only be a good thing. Actually, that can only be a great thing.
[…] know that Bad Mary likes to have fun in their music-making, from their tongue in cheek tunes to raucous covers of […]