The 7 Worlds Collide Project, put together by former Crowded House frontman Neil Finn, is an interesting ordeal. Bringing some of music’s biggest names together for a tour in support of an album of covers and new originals is just plain awesome. However, it doesn’t get more awesome than when one of those said artists (Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy) covers a classic song (“Fake Plastic Trees”) with a legendary rock guitarist (The Smiths’/Modest Mouse’s/The Cribs’ Johnny Marr) and a few of the musicians who contributed to the original number (Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and Phil Selway). Yep, that about does it for me, as far as live music goes.
Although Tweedy does sort of botch the lyrics a little (If I could be what you wanted? honestly?) it doesn’t stop this performance from being pretty legendary. You can see Ed going just as nuts as if it were Thom up at front, and Neil’s son Liam rocks out pretty hard too. Try to get past the bad sound quality, it’s worth it. Have a look see:
The result of the project will be released in the form of a studio album sometime this year, and will reportedly feature all originals with each artist contributing to every song. Phil Selway even takes the role of singer-songwriter on one of them. Interesting….
