Less than a year after releasing their self-titled EP which initially put the project on the map for tons of music blogs back in 2010, Richie Follin’s Guards project released a three-song EP title Cover Songs which saw him take on tracks by Vampire Weekend, M.I.A., and Metallica. Now, over a decade later, Follin is back with More Cover Songs, a vastly expanded collection which manages to work with an even wider range of artists including Ramones, Suicide, Billie Eilish (alongside his sister, Cults vocalist Madeline Follin, as an homage to Eilish’s musical partnership with her brother FINNEAS), and even the M*A*S*H* theme, originally written by Robert Altman’s then-pre-teen son.
“There was a long long list of songs we tried, and a longer list of songs we wanted to try,” he explains of how each of these songs was chosen. “It’s hard to mold songs so ingrained in you into something different, but we tried to stop stressing about that after a while. Some songs sound nothing like the originals—we added parts, or changed tempos or melodies, even lyrics accidentally, and some of the songs were more subtle. The idea was to approach the songs as memories rather than studying chord charts or lyric sheets. That way, by default, you kind of get to the essence of what the song really is to you conceptually. For us, covering songs is like being a kid just playing in their parents’ garage.”
With the album officially dropping tomorrow via CGR, Guards are sharing an early stream of the full project today. You can hear that below, and stay tuned for new original music from the band this fall.
