VARIOUS ARTISTS – Yesterday’s Sunshine Today

Think Like A Key 2024

Bearing the legend of “New Magical Covers Of Nirvana Songs” and reaching for the courtyard of the stars, a plunge into once obscure and now carefully curated catalogue of mind-bending gems.

VARIOUS ARTISTS –
Yesterday’s Sunshine Today

A certain ensemble from Seattle had hardly heard about an Albion collective whose name they unknowingly stole before Patrick Campbell-Lyons and Alex Spyropoulos hit Kurt Cobain’s trio with a lawsuit which would be settled out of court. However, there were quite a few connoisseurs that loved the pastoral psychedelia of the “Simon Simopath” album and other records the two released in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and the NIRVANAs peaceful stand-off revitalized interest in the veterans’ oeuvre. Over the years, this interest transformed into influence – so marvel at the immaculate illustration of a niche cult turning into a small, albeit international, phenomenon: a compendium of Alex and Patrick’s most arresting tunes as interpreted by a multicolored cast of artists from around the world. More so, the deferred 23-track CD variant of “Yesterday’s Sunshine Today” features a fresh cut from those who they celebrate here.

But if the duo’s “Hello God” – a relentless and invigorating song with a slightly cynical slant and an arrangement where decades shift in front of the listener’s mind eye, a piece that lyrically echoes both “Tiny Goddess” which finds Chicagoan warbler Constantine roam, quite gingerly, across the Strawberry-Fields, soft-focused panorama, and “St. John’s Wood Affair” which sees Dorset dwellers ST JOHNS WOOD AFFAIR tap, rather insistently, into their inner Englishness – sparkles with festive electricity, a smattering of previously unissued numbers should expand a fan’s perspective even further. Still, while the USA’s EX NORWEGIAN wield a sharp riff to render “Flashbulb” a luxurious rocker, and the UK’s SUPER 8 add brass effervescence and vocal harmonies to “Darling Darlane” to snatch it from the period clutches, Athens’ ECHO TRAIN cover “Wings Of Love” with gloomy patina and London’s CLOCKWORK FLOWERS fill “Flowers For Friday” with Arcadian vibrancy. There’s also a riveting contrast between “You Can Try It” that a Ukrainian-American combo 8×8 paint in kaleidoscopically swirling colors, and what’s offered by other Greek musicians, Costas Stergiou and THE ABSORBUS MACHINE: a stately, synthesizer-sculpted reimagining of “All Of Us” that takes on chamber equilibrium, and the jazzy raga reading of “All I Do” which envelops the room in a meditative ambience. Unlike these, the adjacent “Busy Man” which accepts a fairy-tale innocence from Nick Capaldi, and “Lonely Boy” which receives mystic mist from Wyatt Starr form a beguiling pair, yet mental puzzles don’t stop here.

In a purely intellectual way, one may be tempted to see how different “Rainbow Chaser” will sound when handled by Los Angelenos Mikah Wilson & PEACHES IN HONEY, and Lisbon’s Jacco Gardner, the former going for seductive delicacy and the latter for spaced-out joviality; or how “Pentecost Hotel” will fare when inhabited by Henry Preistman, a Brit, and Olaf Putker, a Dutchman, who, respectively, reach for a “Whiter Shade” sort of solemnity and artsy expectancy of ghostly guitars. Equally fascinating is methods of accessing Campbell-Lyons and Spyropoulos’ concepts that Israeli Dor Koren and Californians PISCES PEOPLE apply to the enchanting potpourris of “The Show Must Go On / Frankie The Great / I Believe In Magic” and “Trapeze / Requiem For John Coltrane” to defy the tentative epic sway of it all with their gentle stitching of seemingly incompatible melodies. But here’s a purely emotional air to “1999” as performed by Glaswegian John Cavanagh and to “The World Is Cold Without You” which John Howard of Murcia inform with spiritual light.

And that’s the gist of this homage: whimsy is apt to stay transcendental when it’s spectral and divine – and NIRVANA’s legacy embraces both aspects of the sacred art of song.

****4/5

January 25, 2025

Category(s): Reviews
Tags: , , , , , ,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *