A.V. Club Undercover

The morning after the Chicago stop of their U.S tour in support of the excellent new The Brutalist Bricks, Ted Leo And The Pharmacists stopped by The A.V. Club to grace us with a cover of Tears For Fears' 1985 smash hit, "Everybody Wants To Rule The World." The bees in the background made their stage debut at the band's album-release show, and one of them was adopted by The A.V. Club.

Fruit Bats started as a solo project for Eric D. Johnson, who'd been palling around with the guys from Califone in Chicago. Ten years later, they're fully fledged purveyors of gorgeous, melancholy pop--check out last year's The Ruminant Band for proof. (You might also recognize Johnson as the second guitarist in the current Shins lineup.) Here, Fruit Bats lovingly embrace Hall & Oates' 1983 basketball-referencing hit single "One On One."

Pop-punk kingpins Alkaline Trio--performing here as an acoustic duo--stopped by The A.V. Club to tackle a song they love: Archers Of Loaf's 1993 classic of indie-angst, "Web In Front." The Trio's seventh album, This Addiction, came out in February on the band's own Heart & Skull imprint.

We were fairly certain that Starship's 1985 smash hit "We Built This City" would be one of the final songs picked for the debut season of A.V. Undercover, but Cursive proved us wrong. Nebraska's favorite sons attacked the song, making it their own. (In an alternate take, singer Tim Kasher sang "balls-deep in the hoopla" rather than the original's "knee-deep.") Associate editor Kyle Ryan can be seen in the video running the strobe light, an effect Cursive insisted on. The band's latest album is the excellent Mama, I'm Swollen.

When he was signing our wall, Justin Townes Earle mentioned that he shared childlike handwriting with his dad -- legendary songwriter Steve Earle. In this week's Undercover, Justin covers Bruce Springsteen's gorgeous "Atlantic City" in the spirit of the spare original. His latest album, Midnight At The Movies, came out last year.

The usually rocking Retribution Gospel Choir--which features two-thirds of the band Low--decided to get seriously mellow on this cover of The Beach Boys' late-period hit "Kokomo." They also pulled a switcheroo, with drummer Eric Pollard taking over lead vocals and guitar while usual singer-guitarist Alan Sparhawk taps a drum and sings sweet harmonies. Though the original is widely reviled, these guys claim to love it unironically, and that genuine enthusiasm comes through in this performance. Watch 'til the end for an appearance by Rodney The Mailman.

Milwaukee band Maritime--which was born from the ashes of The Promise Ring in 2003--has some big news to announce here: They just signed to Dangerbird Records, home of Silversun Pickups, The Dears, Minus The Bear, and others. Their debut disc for the label (and fourth overall) will be released later this year. But first: the band's mellow cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy The Silence," complete with keytar from drummer Dan Didier. Oh, and they'd like you to know that they're playing at UW-Madison this Friday, April 30.

The Clientele might not be the obvious choice to cover M.I.A.'s breakthrough hit "Paper Planes," but the relatively gentle British band did right by the song, adding two violins and inviting both their tour manager and a photographer friend to sit in on the Undercover session. Frontman Alasdair MacLean even decided to sneak in a line from a Clientele song, "Since K Got Over Me." The Clientele's latest Merge release is Bonfires On The Heath.

Ben Folds was in Chicago for three sold-out shows at the Vic, and he made some time to stop by The A.V. Club and cover Elliott Smith's "Say Yes" for us. Folds has a history with Smith: They did a brief tour together, both opening for Beck, and Folds told us that he'd sheepishly knock on Smith's door before the show to request "Alameda." Folds paid tribute to Smith on 2005's Songs For Silverman, with a song called "Late," and here he does so again, playing a piano-fied version of one of Smith's greatest songs, "Say Yes."

Wye Oak--Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack--asked us so politely if they could bring a friend along to help them cover "Strangers" by The Kinks, and who could refuse when that friend was Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg? The two bands had been touring together, and Wye Oak were working the song out on stage every night. It only made sense that Meiburg would step in to give it some extra oomph. Wye Oak's latest is an EP called My Neighbor / My Creator; it's available digitally now and will be out on CD on June 8.

When Motion City Soundtrack agreed to participate in A.V. Undercover, we assumed they'd pop-punkify Pavement's "Cut Your Hair" with energetic abandon. But they went a different (and awesome) route, gathering five acoustic guitars for a five-man acoustical jam of Tesla-like proportions. Stick around for the "no big hair" line! MCS' latest album is My Dinosaur Life.

The Wedding Present formed 25 years ago in the north of England, and it's safe to say that the band was more influenced by The Buzzcocks and The Fall than by The Rolling Stones. Still, it sounds pretty spectacular when The Wedding Present--in the middle of a tour celebrating the 21st anniversary of its excellent album Bizarro--brings the noise to The Rolling Stones' 1966 classic "19th Nervous Breakdown." The Wedding Present is the only band (so far--is that a hint?) to have a song on the Undercover list and to perform a cover for us: "My Favourite Dress" will rear its head later this summer.

We were excited to see what song Owen Pallett--a.k.a. Final Fantasy, a.k.a. string arranger for Arcade Fire, among others--would choose for Undercover, because pretty much anything was guaranteed to turn out radically different from the original (and gorgeous). He grabbed "Game Of Pricks," from Guided By Voices' classic 1995 album Alien Lanes. Turns out he was a big GBV fan back in the day, but didn't realize until recording this cover that the song features the line, "Weep to water the trees." Pallett's latest album is the terrific Heartland.

The Antlers released one of last year's best (and most heartbreaking) albums: Hospice is a sorta-concept disc about death and relationships. It wasn't a huge leap for the Brooklyn band to choose Pink Floyd's melancholy "Wish You Were Here," a song about longing and loneliness for a person who's now gone. The Antlers are in the midst of a tour opening for The National; this week they'll play Radio City Music Hall, which must be pretty damn exciting. They'll also play Lollapalooza this summer, so try to keep it down so you can hear them.

In the most generalized of descriptions, both Rise Against and Nirvana qualify as "loud punk," so it makes sense that the Chicago melodic-hardcore band chose the legendary Seattle outfit's "Sliver" for our loudest Undercover to date. (The air ducts outside our office, and presumably throughout our building, rattled during the performance.) Rise Against's most recent album, 2008's excellent Appeal To Reason, had the kind of blazing guitars and hoarse-throated vocals from frontman Tim McIlrath that can trace their lineage back to Seattle in the early '90s (and Southern California in the '80s). The band's currently playing a few festival gigs in Europe before heading back home to write its next record, so this is likely as close as Rise Against will come to your city for a while.

We were excited when Frightened Rabbit agreed to stop by the A.V. Club office for an Undercover session, mostly because the Scottish band's recent Winter Of Mixed Drinks is one of the best albums of 2010. Covering The Wedding Present seemed like the obvious choice, but singer-guitarist Scott Hutchison threw us a curveball when he chose "Confetti," from The Lemonheads' classic 1992 album It's A Shame About Ray. While Evan Dando's original is a fairly sunny affair, Hutchison dropped some of that special Scottish sadness into his version. Then we all ate eggs in a conference room. True story!

Clem Snide frontman (and only constant member) Eef Barzelay has made other artists' songs his own many times before, from Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" to Hank Williams' "Lost On The River" to The Velvet Underground's "I'll Be Your Mirror." When we told Ben Folds that Barzelay would be shooting an Undercover, he said something like, "I can listen to that guy sing anything, all day." When he chose Journey's 1983 power ballad "Faithfully" for Undercover, we were delighted. When he told us it'd be performed in solo-ukulele form, that delight was doubled. It helps that the slightly cheesy lyric is something that Barzelay can relate to--missing your family while out on the road. Here's an amazing line from Wikipedia about Journey's original video: "Steve Perry can be seen shaving his short-lived but talked-about moustache in the video." Don't bail on this video, either: There's a surprise at the end that's even better than moustache-shaving. Clem Snide's latest album is The Meat Of Life.

We were pitching Coheed And Cambria's publicist on a different band for Undercover when he mentioned that the prog-metal champs might be up for it. Shrinking the New York band's huge sound down to a manageable size for our little room seemed like a challenge too potentially interesting to resist--and shrink down they did. Singer-guitarist Claudio Sanchez and guitarist Travis Stever brought a gentleness to The Smiths' semi-deep cut "A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours." Coincidentally, Coheed had already covered a song from our list, Journey's "Faithfully," in the past. But here they took one of the most challenging songs from Undercover and made it their own, partially as a gift to their manager, who's a big fan of the song. Coheed's latest disc is Year Of The Black Rainbow.

As the Undercover list grew shorter, we worried slightly that The Wedding Present's "My Favourite Dress" would prove to be a stumper. We couldn't have guessed that it wouldn't stump Patrick Stump, singer of Chicago pop-punk kingpins Fall Out Boy. As you'll recall, The Wedding Present already stopped by the office to cover The Rolling Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown." Here, Stump--whose band is on some kind of "indefinite hiatus" that we didn't ask him about--takes on the cult classic, which originally appeared on The Wedding Present's 1987 album George Best. Stump brought some serious soul to the song, which we imagine he'll be injecting into his debut solo disc, due out later this year.

Superchunk's last album, Here's To Shutting Up, came out in 2001. (For those keeping score, that's a long-ass time ago.) The legendary Chapel Hill band has played a few gigs in the last decade, but mostly kept quiet, so when a Chicago show was announced, we made a collective little "squee" noise. And since we're obviously big fans ("Detroit Has A Skyline" is on the master Undercover list!), we finagled and asked nicely and begged the quartet to drop by and record a song for us. Superchunk chose "In Between Days" by The Cure, and made it--as you'll see--their own. Oh, and in case you hadn't heard: There's a new Superchunk album just around the corner, called Majesty Shredding. It comes out September 14 on Merge, and it's a rocker in that old-school Superchunk way. Get excited.

Adorable duo Mates Of State just released an all-covers disc called Crushes(The Covers Mixtape), so it seemed like a natural fit for Undercover. We figured it'd just be just Jason and Kori adding sweetness and light to The Replacements classic "I Will Dare," but they showed up with three other players in tow, including comedian Todd Barry on drums--he even donned kick-ass drummer gloves for the performance. Also: trumpet! Dig it.

It's not often--never, to be exact--that we have Oscar winners in our office, but we were thrilled that Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, a.k.a. The Swell Season, agreed to stop by and cover Neutral Milk Hotel's "Two-Headed Boy" for Undercover. The duo has been riding an incredible wave since starring together in the film Once, for which they won the Best Original Song Oscar in 2008. They brought a full band to rock through the song, and even added something extra at the end--a bit of Neutral Milk's "The King Of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2-3." After they left our little room, The Swell Season headed out to a sold-out concert at Ravinia, then flew to a sold-out show at the Hollywood Bowl and an appearance on The Tonight Show. All in all, a pretty good week.

We thought that Superchunk's "Detroit Has A Skyline" would be one of the last songs to go--and that it would take a particularly rocking band to do it justice. Of the final three songs, it made perfect sense for New York's Cymbals Eat Guitars, who stopped by the office the day before playing a blistering set at Lollapalooza. The band's debut, Why There Are Mountains, came out last year, and it's a raucous collision of Built To Spill, Modest Mouse, and even Cap'n Jazz. Most of those acts were rocking while the CEG guys were still in school; they're still in their early 20s. Cymbals' performance was easily the loudest Undercover yet; thankfully most of our neighbors had gone home when they stopped by.

Tokyo Police Club had just two songs to choose from for Undercover--they thought they had three, but Cymbals Eat Guitars grabbed "Detroit Has A Skyline" just hours before TPC chose Billy Squier's "Everybody Wants You," the leadoff track from Squier's amazingly titled 1982 album Emotions In Motion. (If you're keeping score, that means the final track chosen was "Driver 8" by R.E.M., which is up next week.) These young men--who weren't born when Squier's song hit the charts--rocked the song plenty, riffing a little harder than they generally do in their own songs. But don't take our word for it: Check out TPC's latest album, Champ.

And so it ends... When there were just three tracks left to choose from, New York's The Walkmen were kind enough to commit to performing whatever song was last. It surprised us, too, that R.E.M.'s 1985 classic "Driver 8" wasn't covered sooner in the series. (Maybe the Stipey-ness of it was too daunting.) But here are The Walkmen, ready to nail that snaky guitar and those impenetrable lyrics, including the classic "the power lines have floaters so the airplanes won't get snagged." It just so happens that R.E.M. just released a deluxe edition of the album that contains "Driver 8," the classic Fables Of The Reconstruction. The Walkmen are about to release a classic, too. (Segue!) Lisbon comes out September 14 on Fat Possum. It's been two years in the making, but worth the wait: It's easily one of the best albums of 2010. Oh, and you may have noticed that you can now vote for your favorite five Undercover performances.