If you’re like us and follow Mates of State on Twitter, then you’re probably aware that the husband-wife duo of Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner have been busy working on a covers album. This summer, they’ll unveil the finished product, a 10-track effort titled Crushes (The Covers Mixtape).
The first full-length recorded and produced by Hammel and Gardner themselves, with a mixing assist from longtime collaborator Peter Katis (The National, Interpol), the album hears the duo covering a variety of well-known acts, including Death Cab For Cutie (“Technicolor Girls”), Belle & Sebastian (“Sleep the Clock Around”), The Mars Volta (“Son et Lumiere”), Daniel Johnston (“True Love Will Find You in the End”), Girls (“Laura”), Nick Cave (“Love Letter”), and the legendary Tom Waits (“Long Way Home”).
“We’ve been talking about doing a covers record for a long time. We’d hear a great song at 2 AM while driving the straight line from one part of Texas to the next, and all we’d want to do is play that song as if we had written it,” explained the band in an issued press release. “There are so many artists we considered, some for the mere fact that they wrote a perfect song, some for nostalgia’s sake, some because more people need to hear them, some for the challenge, and some to shed a whole different light on a song: Our light… make it a duet, more optimistic or maybe less traditional.”
If you’re not already overwhelmed with excitement at this point, wait until you hear this: The record also had an “unexpected after-effect of jumpstarting the creation of the next Mates of State record.” Explains the band: “When we were finished, we couldn’t wait to write our own songs again…. In dissecting these songs, taking out the biggest creative component–actually writing the song–we were more thoughtful of other musical aspects.”
No word on release dates for either of the two albums, though the Crushes (The Covers Mixtape) will come first sometime this summer. As an early preview, you can check out the duo’s cover of Girls’ “Laura” over at its official website.
Crushes (The Covers Mixtape) Tracklist:
01. Laura (Girls)
02. Son et Lumiere (The Mars Volta)
03. Sleep the Clock Around (Belle & Sebastian)
04. Technicolor Girls (Death Cab for Cutie)
05. Long Way Home (Tom Waits)
06. Love Letter (Nick Cave)
07. Second Hand News (Fleetwood Mac)
08. 17 Pink Sugar Elephants (Vashti Bunyan)
09. Roller Coaster Ride (Dear Nora)
10. True Love Will Find You in the End (Daniel Johnston)