keepers 5
keeper avg .454
Whitley's final album is pretty much split evenly between covers and originals. The first of the former is an appropriately noisy cover of The Stooges' "Now I Wanna Be Your Dog"****, and his approach to the Flaming Lips' "Mountainside"**** gives it a different kind of heaviness than the punk-y original. "I'm In Love With A German Film Star"**** receives a hypnotic drone, and the aggressively angular melodic blurbs of Gary Numan's "Are Friends Electric"**** sound better on guitar than Numan's original synth. Sorry to say but Led Zeppelin already did the heavy rock take on "Bring In On Home" - well actually they changed it significantly, but they paid homage to the original in their cover's intro, and they pretty much own that heavy blues approach. Whitley's version is respectable and respectful but not surprising. Of the originals, the greatest has to be Tim Beattie's simple, very lo-fi "Cut The Cards"****. Wordless except for some "da da da da da's" and a spoken part, the beautiful bluegrass jam needs nothing else. The atmospheric instrumental "Inn" sounds as haunted as the film it should have been part of. Of the rest, the instrumental title track is a stately drone with multi-layered dialogue, "I Go Evil" some more heavy Zeppelin-esque blues, and the closing instrumental "Come Home" appropriately suggestive of driving.
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