Paying Tribute to the Tribute!

Fazer Magazine has posted their own review of "The Nurse Who Loved Me: A Tribute to Failure"...

Review by Mike Bax

"This project could very easily have gone wrong. An ambitious small label production of Failure covers by (for the most part) independent bands (Paramore’s superb cover of ‘Stuck On You’ instantly adds a little street credibility to the project). But this could have been a train wreck. It could have been tragic.

The Nurse Who Loved Me may just find its way into my most revered stack of tribute albums (of which the Morr labels’ cover compilation of Slowdive tunes by ambient artists sits atop the heap). The Nurse Who Loved Me is up there though, to be sure. All of these independent artists really bring their A-game to their contributions. Solaris’ cover by Sex Club Reject is pretty amazing –it’s vibrating & digitized background noises actually enhance a cherished song from the Failure library. (Damn) This Desert Air’s cover of ‘Sergeant Politeness’ is another polished gem on the disc, as is Frog’s cover by Satellite Tragedy.

I can’t say that these covers are better than the source material – as it would be an injustice to Ken Andrews and Failure. I would hope that somewhere out there Mr. Andrews and company are smiling as they play some of these covers – as many of them are really quite fantastic. I would also hope that this project might steer some of our lost generation to a much overlooked band from the early nineties.

Make sure you open up the CD Extra portion of the CD, and pull the three hidden mp3 tracks into your iTunes as well. The Company We Keep’s cover of ‘Stuck On You’; Satellite Tragedy’s cover of ‘Pennies’; and Stemage’s cover of ‘Undone’ are just as good as the 16 songs included on the physical CD.

I think what’s obvious upon playing this compilation through a few times is that it’s the material that translates. All of these covers work so well because Failure worked so well… and that’s the real point of this tribute album."