Review Summary: All tribute albums should be like Germs Of Perfection: respectful and deferent, while at the same time unafraid of attempting something new and extremely fun to listen to. Not perfect, but definitely worth your time.
Tribute albums are generally a tricky business. The participating bands are either in it for the money or out of devotion for the artist being homaged, and in either case the results can be underwhelming. The money-grubbing bands will generally deliver soulless, by-the-books covers, while the fanboys will want to play the song note-for-note and end up delivering inferior carbon copies of the original tracks. That is why finding a tribute album like
Germs Of Perfection - which actually brings something new to the table and remains listenable and interesting throughout - is such a delight. The fact that it happens to be free and band-endorsed is only the cherry on top of the cake, and the final argument in favour of downloading this album.
Of course, there's no harm in having good source material, and when your starting point is a band like Bad Religion - as consistently good as they are musically repetitive - your tribute is already one step ahead of most others. Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz's hardcore punks regularly deliver some of the best hooks and lyrics this side of commercial punk, and it would be hard to mess up one of their songs no matter how much you mutilated it. And while some of the artists here come close to achieving that prowess, most stay on the comfortably high section of the quality ladder.
Musically and thematically,
Germs Of Perfection - which, ironically, does not contain its titular track anywhere - can be split into two halves. The first basically amounts to something akin to a Bad Religion folk-indie album, if that is conceivable. The songs are mostly acoustic and very minimal (you have to wait until the fifth track to hear an electric guitar, and even then it's only a single chord), and succeed in highlighting two things - just how simple Bad Religion's instrumentals are (most can be reduced to a couple of chords on an acoustic guitar) and just how good some of their lyrics can be. Opener
Don't in particular shines in William Elliott Whitmore's bluesy delivery, which accents and underlines what is probably the band's best lyrical work. Lines like
"and maybe Jack did it to Marilyn/but he didn't to South Vietnam" become even better in the bluesman's relaxed, understandable and heartfelt drawl, making this the first standout in an overall strong album.
The following few tracks are more hit-or-miss, with Switchfoot's relatively interesting slowdown of
Sorrow being undercut by Ted Leo sucking the fun out of
Against The Grain and The Weakerthans delivering an indifferent
Sanity. The real turning point comes after the first fully electrified track - Cheap Girls' average
Kerosene - which has the merit of opening up an entire new section of the album. From here on out, the songs become more typical-sounding, but also predictably more interesting for the average Bad Religion fan. There are still a few mis-steps - Tegan and Sara's exceedingly naïve re-reading of the lyrically brutal
Suffer - and unremarkable moments -
Pity by Guttermouth - but generally the tracks maintain the high standard of the first half while simultaneously becoming more fun. Standouts include New Politics' gushingly enthusiastic
Generator and Cobra Skulls' rather literal
Give You Nothing. Bad Religion themselves contribute with
The Devil In Stitches, an average track which is nonetheless a pleasant addition to an already appealing package. The final result, while at times shaky, never fails to please, and is absolutely worth the free and legal download.
In short, then, all tribute albums should be like
Germs Of Perfection: respectful and deferent, while at the same time unafraid of attempting something new and extremely fun to listen to. Not perfect, but definitely worth your time.
Recommended Tracks
Don't
Generator
Download it legally and for FREE here:www.myspace.com/badreligion
