“What’s this?” I asked. “A Paul McCartney tribute album benefitting cancer charities and featuring the Finn Brothers? Sign me up!”
Actually, this nice little selection, proceeds from which go toward the fight against breast cancer, has many good covers of Macca’s post-Beatles best. Owsley kicks things off with a picture-perfect reading of “Band On The Run” which doesn’t stray very far from the original Wings recording. SR-71 turns “My Brave Face” – one of my favorite latter-day McCartney solo tunes simply by virtue of the fact that it isn’t “Hope & Deliverance” – into a gleeful hard-rock thrash. Semisonic also faithfully replicates “Jet”, rocking it out a bit but not so much that it’s unrecognizable. The Virgos give a similar treatment to “Maybe I’m Amazed”, while the Merrymakers punch up “No More Lonely Nights” (another personal favorite) a bit. Some of the other renditions fly under the radar a bit – Matthew Sweet’s “Every Night” for one.
And as for Tim and Neil Finn? It pains me to say it, but their cover of “Too Many People” is a mess – it sounds like an unrehearsed one-take-and-that’s-it wonder, without much effort. The arrangement isn’t organized, the sound quality isn’t even up to the standards of the brothers’ admittedly (and intentionally) lo-fi Finn album, and the vocals just smack of a cover band that’s been asked to play something they’d mostly forgotten. Sad to say, the Finn Brothers, who drew my attention to this collection, turned out to be its biggest disappointment. I was stunned. I was also looking forward to the They 
Might Be Giants cover of “Ram On”, but it wasn’t so much disappointing as just inscrutably cryptic in its new arrangement.
Overall, a nice set – and one that truly turned my expectations on ear by introducing me to some excellent new artists while the known quantities gave me a wee bit of a let-down.
- Band On The Run – Owsley (5:14)
- My Brave Face – SR-71 (3:00)
- Junk – Kevin Hearn, Steven Page and Stephen Duffy (2:56)
- Jet – Semisonic (4:15)
- No More Lonely Nights – The Merrymakers (4:11)
- Let Me Roll It – Robyn Hitchcock (4:21)
- Too Many People – Finn Brothers (3:43)
- Dear Friend – The Minus 5 (4:45)
- Every Night – Matthew Sweet (2:56)
- Waterfalls – Sloan (4:21)
- Man We Was Lonely – World Party (2:59)
- Coming Up – John Faye Power Trip (3:43)
- Maybe I’m Amazed – Virgos (4:14)
- Love In Song – The Judybats (4:04)
- Warm And Beautiful – Linus of Hollywood (3:08)
- Ram On – They Might Be Giants (2:40)
Released by: Oglio
Release date: 2001
Total running time: 60:30
