Various Artists - The Smiths is Dead (Sony) If this has not been done before it is an interesting new twist on the tribute record - a cover of an entire album. This track-for-track reconstruction of the Smiths' 1986 classic The Queen is Dead has each of the 10 songs recorded by a different artist.
Unfortunately, in spite of or perhaps because of the fact that The Queen is Dead is such an excellent album - widely regarded as the Smiths' finest - most of this is a disappointment.
A cover of any great song is a balancing act - too much like the original and it becomes redundant, too different and it risks losing the qualities which made the song good in the first place. With a seminal band like the Smiths, the challenge is even greater.
It's interesting how the different bands have chosen to handle their songs - while the Boo Radleys with the original title track and Bis with The Boy with the Thorn in His Side opt to 'modernise' the originals with 90s' pop embellishments to the point of obscurity, Supergrass and Therapy? with Some Girls are Bigger than Others and Vicar in a Tutu have merely pumped up the songs with big rock muscles.
Both Billy Bragg's run through Never Had No One Ever and the Trash Can Sinatras' I Know It's Over are faithful but pedestrian, while the who-can-sound-most-like-the-original prize goes to Placebo and Bigmouth Strikes Again, with the exception of the vocalist who sounds like he has a clothes peg on his nose.
The only tracks which manage to tiptoe the line between celebration and desecration are Cemetry Gates by the Frank & Walters and There is a Light that Never Goes Out by the Divine Comedy.