#tjo

These are not all exactly covers – some are glancing meditations that provide only brief glimpses of ultra-popular source material. “Borderline Intro” barely teases the synth pop, gate-reverbed drumming opening of Madonna’s early hit, while “Everything Counts” makes only brief contact with the Depeche Mode song it references. Aztec Camera’s “Oblivious” is decocted into the barest essence of its guitar line and colored over with drum machine. The songs are in TJO’s head more than in the music itself, touchstones briefly tapped and discarded.

Fuller, longer re-imaginings are easier to recognize, but even they bear TJO’s imprint. Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer,” one of 1983’s ubiquitous singles, turns strange and chilly in her interpretation, its peppy marimba riff sinking into haunted, rueful refrains. Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” comes in on tick-tocking drum machine beat and vampire castle synth foreboding. Cohen sang it with a brash worldly-ness; he was in on the joke and not expecting much better. TJO sings softly, distantly, as if from the other side of reality, as if the world had already done its worst and won.

The biggest hit that TJO considers is Cher’s massive “Believe,” an unusually dance-pop entry in Cher’s catalogue and one of the earlier pop songs to make extensive use of autotune. TJO pays her homage in autotune as well, albeit a fragile, whispery autotune that sounds like it’s coming in from another planet. And yet, it’s not a very good song, certainly not good enough to strip down to its acoustic underwear like this.

Indeed, that’s the problem with the whole collection, that these are disposable pop songs mostly, not really worthy of an artist like TJO however fondly she recalls them. TJO’s artist statement makes it clear that this is a very personal project, mostly a way to remember her brother (she calls it “good medicine”), and it’s hard to criticize on that basis. But yeesh, some of these songs.