Like, I suspect, a lot of people who bought this Record Store day release, I've had this album on cd for years. It came out when I was living in Australia and I only discovered that it had been released because I stumbled across a copy in the excellent Land Speed Records in Canberra. I didn't buy a copy until sometime later when I was in Fopp in Brighton (for a bargain £5).
Of course I also have a copy of the covers album that Deftones released for RSD in 2012, and the two album share a large overlap: Savoury (Jawbox cover), Simple Man (Lynyrd Skynyrd cover), No Ordinary Love (Sade cover featuring Jonah Matranga providing some excellent vocals), If Only Tonight We Could Sleep (The Cure cover), Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want (The Smiths cover) and The Chauffeur (Duran Duran cover recorded in 1994 but also made it onto the Resident Evil: Apocalypse soundtrack ten years later) all appear on Covers. Conversely there are two covers - Wax and Wane (Cocteau Twins cover) and Sinatra (Helmet cover on the b-side to to Minerva) - that are on here but not on Covers. The fact that neither represent a complete collection of either covers or b-sides is strange.
There are some nice acoustic versions (including the excellent acoustic version of Be Quiet and Drive from the single, again featuring Jonah on vocals) and a couple of rarities in the form of Crenshaw Punch / I'll Throw Rocks at You and Black Moon featuring B-Real from Cypress Hill. There were a few nice treats to be found in the package too - the d-side is etched with the band name twice (although I feel they missed a trick by not etching the flower that graces the label and cd on so many of their releases - perhaps it would be too difficult to do well). Not only that, but they've also thrown in the dvd that came with the original cd release, which was totally unexpected. The dvd has all the band's videos until 2005. I watched it back in 2006 but not more recently. I probably should. A lot of their videos were plastered over MTV2 for years, but I remember enjoying some of the videos that weren't so over-played. As a teenager I remember thinking how fucking cool those guys were in the video to My Own Summer (Shove It).
I feel like this year RSD has gone to some effort to up their game in the releases; compare this to Covers from 2012 and you can see the difference - coloured and etched vinyl, inserts, dvds vs a single LP of almost entirely re-released covers with a simple sleeve. I, for one, am glad of it.
Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, insert, dvd
Tracks: 14
Cost: £26 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 16/04/16
Colour: Gold
Etching: none
mp3s: no
