For all the nostalgia people my age seem to have for an era that ended long before they were born, wearing its clothes and buying its records — it’s remarkable that a concerted effort hasn’t been made to resurrect “vintage” songs and breathe new life into them. Vinyl albums still sell (whether or not the buyers have anything to play them on), and of course there was the swing craze a few years back, but how many performers reach back further than thirty or forty years for songs to cover?

If there were such a movement (call it oldcore, maybe), Erin McKeown would be at its forefront with an archtop in her hands. Not only did she populate her new album, Sing You Sinners, with thirteen covers of songs a hell of a lot older than she is, but she had the good sense to acknowledge that the way those songs were played and recorded the first time around was the right way. McKeown could have wandered off the straight and narrow path and either augmented those tracks with the trappings of modern production or stripped them of excess instrumentation – and personality – but to her credit she did not. From the occasional woodwind to the ever-present upright bass, the bright analog charm of the original songs remains intact, and McKeown claims them for her own with nothing but her voice.

Those brash, warm, and astonishingly versatile vocals drop
effortlessly into place, each note a testament to McKeown’s love of
the tunes she covers. It’s not hard to picture her as a young girl,
devouring her parents’ and grandparents’ record collections,
memorizing the lines until she can sing along. She carries the same youthful enthusiasm into her renditions of “Paper Moon,” “Rhode Island Is Famous For You,” and “Something’s Gotta Give.” Meanwhile, “Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me” and “Just One of Those Things” manage to combine brooding melancholy and unflagging optimism the way only songs from the 30s and 40s seem to do, invoking images of a ballroom after midnight, cigarette smoke lingering near the chandeliers while snappily-dressed dancers take to the floor one more time before gathering their coats.

There are a million wrong ways to cover a song, and it could be said that McKeown took the easy way out with Sing You Sinners when she chose not to drag any of these classics kicking and screaming into this century. But it’s obvious after just one listen that the choice was made not out of timidity, but love and respect for the music that influenced her from the very beginning. Any other treatment would have just been wrong.

Erin McKeown Official Site