Please Please Please: a tribute to The Smiths

Product Description 2011 tribute to Manchester quartet the Smiths on this release, Indie Rock luminaries including the Wedding Present, Built to Spill's Doug Martsch, Throwing Muses co-founder Tanya Donelly, Telekinesis and William Fitzsimmons contribute covers of 20 classic songs by Morrissey, Marr and the boys. Review Surprise. As an unapologetic (even then) original Smiths devotee, I expected a pleasant affirmation from overmatched inferiors. I got instead this wonderful 20-song, double-CD blockbuster. Disc one is pure excellence-gilded, gorgeous, thematically radiant, neo-4AD chamber pop dominated by gorgeous-voiced women, doing to Morrissey and Johnny Marr's hollowed '80s originals what 4AD's Ivo Watts-Russell did to '60s/'70s treasures with This Mortal Coil. There's a spirituality that not only reveres The Smiths, but also gets their deeply human, deeply moving connection unmatched since. The Chloe Chaidez-led L.A. standouts Kitten begin on a dramatic note, book-ending their sleekly stomping 'Panic' (1986 single) with bits of 'The Death of a Disco Dancer' (1987's finale, Strangeways Here We Come) in ghostly fragments that would impress The House of Love (plus, they substitute 'provincial town' California references for 'Dundee, Carlyle, Humberside!'); ex-Devics L.A. shoegaze star Sara Lov sits on the burble in Andy Rourke's bassline for Meat is Murder's immortal 'Well I Wonder'; Throwing Muses/Breeders/Belly chanteuse Tanya Donelly, reprising her collaboration with Oakland's Dylan in the Movies, removes the glam basis for 1987 single 'Shoplifters of the World Unite' for lovely strings; and the Sundays-like Sixpence None the Richer and Dala measure the wistful in Strangeways' 'I Won t Share You' and 'Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me.' The men are as tasteful, especially William Fitzsimmons, Mike Viola, and Greg Laswell, though David Gedge, with Wedding Present and Cinerama, and Doug Martsch add volume on a boisterous disc two. Please, Please, Please is grand, grand, grand! --Jack Rabid (Big Takeover - Top 40 Pick) It's not only deep cuts that get covered on this 20-track collection -- plenty of folks take a crack at the monsters of Smith-dom. Joy Zipper slows down What Difference Does It Make?, largely de-clawing it but making it more meditative and not without its charms; Mike Viola boldly turns in a chamber pop rendering of How Soon I