Record Review: MXPX – “On the Cover II”

MxPx never reached the commercial peaks of contemporaries like New Found Glory and Good Charlotte. They’ve been doing a fair bit of wheel-spinning since they were dropped by A&M and have released a “hits” package, a rarities collection, re-released another rarities set, and now have a new collection of covers.

On The Cover II picks up where the group’s On The Cover EP left off way back in 1995. The Bremerton, Wash. trio cover tunes that run the gamut from punk rock classics (Dead Milkmen’s “Punk Rock Girl”) to ’80s pop (Poison’s “Fallen Angel”) to the weird and overly ambitious (Queen’s “Somebody To Love”).

While their choices show MxPx have good taste, their arrangements are a little too straightforward. The worst thing you can say about a cover tune is it makes you want to listen to the original. And copying Adam Clayton’s drum sound, as the band do on U2’s “I Will Follow,” isn’t going to engender any goodwill.

The best cuts aren’t the ones you’d expect. The shambolic, off-key brilliance of the original “Punk Rock Girl” is glossed over and the cover of The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” is just uninspired. But their versions of “Fallen Angel” and Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is A Place On Earth,” featuring Tsunami Bomb’s Agent M on vocals, are great summer car jams. The only exception to this rule is a ripping version of mid-’80s Ramones tune “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes To Bitburg),” where everything coalesces.

This review originally appeared at Chartattack.com