Erin McKeown Sing you Sinners

"I call them 'standards' because I like that word and I like the idea that there is a sense of what's good in what you are shooting for", explains Erin McKeown to fan, friend, and interviewer, Rita, in the sleevenotes to her covers album Sing you Sinners. The New England singer-songwriter has forsaken the introspection and social commentary of self-penned work to record a set of songs culled from the very firmament of musical history-numbers made famous by Judy, Ella, Nat, and Bing.

For singer-songwriters, the covers album has become something of a rite of passage: downing the self-penned stream of consciousness and ego-reference that are the tools of the trade, and taking up someone else's tracks, to prove your worth as a singer and interpreter of songs. From Cat Power's sublime Covers Record to Tori Amos's ridiculous (but worthwhile) Strange Little Girls, there are some triumphant reinterpretations of classic songs.

But tackling songs such as Get Happy and Paper Moon is perhaps more of a challenge than your run of the mill rock cover. The songs have a life of their own, outside the performances of them down the years, they are cultural possessions, things that we all know that are part of the soundtrack to our lives. While it is easy to do them adequately, it is difficult to do them well or in a way that will stand out from crowd but still honour the legacy of the songs.

"I wanted to make it fast and I wanted to make it live, so the three people I chose are people I that I have played with and travelled with a lot", Erin tells Rita about the players on this jazz and swing tinted album. Although set well within McKeown's familiar folk-swing territory, the buoyant, jazzy arrangements are very much in keeping with the style of playing in which many of the numbers were first made famous.

And here is where McKeown comes unstuck, while she is a more than capable singer, she doesn't have the empathy for these songs that the great interpreters do. She and her band seem to be perfectly happy on Get Happy, but the infectious joy that Judy Garland's version has is lacking, and a listener who is unhappy at the start of the song is unlikely to have got happy by the end. Excusable for a couple of diversions on an album of her own songs, throughout the 13 tracks, McKeown's self-satisfied takes on these songs begins to grate, and by the end the smugness meters are straining at 11. The swingification of I Was a Little Too Lonely (and You Were a Little Too Late), a song which in the hands of Nat King Cole is a witty excuse for philandering, strips the meaning from the song. This sorry state of affairs recurs throughout the album, like Robbie Williams' ham fisted attempts a few years back.

I want to like this album, I like the songs, and McKeown is an interesting and talented character. But while each of the songs is delivered with some panache, Sing you Sinners is essentially a vanity project, adding little to the songs and unbearably smug down to the sycophantic interview in the sleevenotes. Although Erin McKeown is usually worth a look, this album is really worth a miss.