Glen Campbell "Meet Glen Campbell" (Capitol)
The best song on Jenny Lewis's Rabbit Fur Coat was her Traveling Wilburys cover; she turned "Handle With Care" -- with assists from indie worker-bees Oberst, Ward and Gibbard -- into a post-millennial service economy lament. (In the hands of Lynne/Petty/Harrison/Orbison/Dylan, I saw it more as a rumination on suburban boomer anomie.) But more importantly, Lewis refreshed a fusty, shopworn hit by simply taking it seriously. Jenny one, FM rock zero. In that same way, Glen Campbell's new album racks up a score of at least 3-0. With its 10 showy covers of alt-rock familiarities and AOR chestnuts, Meet Glen Campbell is some laugh-out-loud shit, but only because it's so surprisingly vibrant and surehanded.
The baritone, nearly monotone, Rhinestone Cowboy -- who still plays a mean, mean rhythm guitar -- makes the most of the Foo Fighters' "Times Like These," festooning it with countrypolitan strings and replacing Dave Grohl's desperate howl with grandfatherly force. It's purely believable. The other two home runs: the Velvet Underground's "Jesus" (not heroin-twee, but boozy megachurch!) and Jackson Browne's "These Days" (not, uh, Jackson Browne but, like, manly!). Only a real grump would fail to see the entertainment value in either.
The other seven tracks are all pop-relevant, if less inspired. The two Pettys ("Walls" and "Angel Dream") are perfectly CMT; Travis's "Sing" gains stature, if only because its the leadoff track; John Lennon's "Grow Old With Me" becomes big-hearted but prosaic; and Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)" and U2's "All I Want Is You" are what they are. Only the Replacements' "Sadly Beautiful" verges on hokum, but it might be because lyrics such as, "Baby needs a brand new pair of eyes/Cause the ones you got now see only goodbyes" sound proper only when they emit from a bedraggled Paul Westerberg.
In the end, Meet Glen Campbell avoids all kinds of things, including outright twang. And unlike latter-day Johnny Cash, Campbell isn't trying to save us from ourselves. He's just trying to sell some music -- a notion that wasn't always crass, and wasn't always complicated.
Meet Glen Campbell is still streaming on Phawker Radio.
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