Pitchfork

A quick scan of Will Oldham's discography reveals a nasty penchant for perverting rules of identity, fiddling with listener expectations, and flipping shit upside down (check out 2004's Bonnie Prince Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music, where two of Oldham's many alter-egos battle for stylistic supremacy, pitting smooth pedal steel against scrappy acoustics). Oldham's latest effort, a collaboration with Chicago stalwarts Tortoise, is an equally unflinching testament to his shape-shifting jones: The Brave and the Bold collects covers of disparate artists, including Devo, Elton John, Richard Thompson, the Minutemen, Melanie, Bruce Springsteen, Lungfish, Don Williams, Milton Nascimento, and Quix*o*tic, howled by Oldham while Tortoise churns incessantly in the background.

Tortoise's long-acclaimed math-rock stylings remain intact throughout, and Oldham's voice is still all elbows and knees, dry and rangy, but The Brave and the Bold isn't necessarily predictable. Both artists maintain their signature sounds here, yet the pairing yields few particularly fiery or compelling results. Instead, classic songs are rearranged and reconsidered, stripped down and rebuilt-- theoretically, the results should be intriguing, but instead, The Brave and the Bold is mostly mediocre, benefiting from neither Oldham's expert songwriting nor Tortoise's experimental clash.

The Brave and the Bold's version of "Thunder Road" is crushing and ominous, unapologetically divorced from Springsteen's fist-pumping highway anthem, and less a call to action than a proclamation of defeat, broken and sad, punctuated by plodding guitar and weird hisses. No matter how hard the band tries to distill its essence, the awesome, screaming glory of "Thunder Road" can't be culled from languished pronouncements like, "Well I got this guitar/ And I learned how to make it talk." All that charm is buried deep in Springsteen's undeniable, gorgeously adolescent cockiness, the promise of escape, the momentum of flight, the big moment, two minutes in, where the drums kick up and the backing vocals swell and Springsteen hollers "Roll down the window!" Rip that away, and "Thunder Road" becomes limp and awkward.

The weird, feel-good thumps and scale-crawling of Devo's "That's Pep" are translated into fart-feedback and sped-up honks, with Oldham's vocals periodically seeped in thick, uncomfortable echo (although there's still something excellent about the way Oldham yells "pep!," presumably with his eyebrows raised and hands in the air). Lungfish's menacing "Love Is Love" keeps much of its original shape, while the dancefloor smarm of Elton John's "Daniel" is traded-in for trademark Tortoise twitters, with Oldham's voice layered in effects and near-indecipherable; although Oldham's pipes could be a little less heavily treated (all that fuzz obscures classic Oldham nuance), "Daniel" is still the album's most successful rendition, somehow retaining all the grinning heart of the original, and giving Oldham a chance to dust-off his crazy falsetto.

Ultimately, The Brave and the Bold is a collection of not-particularly-compelling cover songs, rolled out by two of contemporary indie's most uncompromising and rewarding forces. Or, in short: We all really wish this was better-- less tiring, less dour, less sluggish-- than it actually is.