Copeland, Dressed Up & In Line

Okay, so I caught an abridged version of Copeland this fall when they opened for The Rentals, and I could’ve sworn frontman/songwriter/main guy Aaron Marsh said the band would have a new album out very soon. Now that I’ve got Dressed Up & In Line in hand, I’m not sure this is it. Rather than a “real” album, Dressed Up is a collection of B-sides, outtakes, cover versions, and left-behinds that span Copeland’s seven-year history.

Given that, it comes as no surprise that the album suffers from the problem that, pretty much by design, afflicts any B-sides/covers release: it doesn’t really sound like an actual “album.” Which is understandable, since it’s not — it’s an odd-and-ends mix of different songs from different albums/periods in the band’s life, so how in the hell’s going to all hang together like they kicked it out in a week at some studio? I’ll give the band credit for trying, mind you — they apparently went back and reworked some of the really old stuff, retooling the tracks so die-hard fans won’t feel ripped off and so they at least sound somewhat similar.

That’s a good plan on the face of it, but Dressed Up & In Line misses the mark; it sounds like what it is, and because of that listening to the album is a bit like listening to somebody’s mixtape of their favorite band, except that in this case the songs aren’t the band’s “hits” (mostly) but are outtakes and such. This is kind of a problem, especially for a relative newbie to the band like myself. About the only Copeland I’ve heard ’til now (barring the band’s live performance) has been 2003’s Beneath Medicine Tree, with parts of 2004’s Know Nothing Stays the Same all-covers EP thrown in for flavor.

Speaking of covers, by the way, I was a bit surprised at the two the band picked to showcase — Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” and The Police’s “Every Breath You Take.” They play the former straight, if anything injecting a bit more “rock” into the original’s swirly trippiness, and for the most part it does the job, even if Marsh can’t pull off Chris Cornell’s trademark shriek. The only bad thing about the track is that it sounds so much like the Soundgarden version that it ends up being fairly nonessential. If you’ve heard the song, Copeland’s take on it isn’t going to surprise you much.

“Every Breath You Take,” on the other hand, is interestingly re-envisioned as a soaring, melodic ballad, but that in itself is a bit of a misstep. Back in college, a friend happened to put this on a mix tape she gave to her boyfriend at the time, and I didn’t think much about it ’til another friend pointed out, horrified, that the song’s about the unrequited love of a stalker. There’s a hint of the sinister to Sting’s delivery on the song, but that’s totally absent here — the boys of Copeland instead make it as undeniably gorgeous as the rest of their songs, with minor-key piano, echoing vocals, and wonderful strings. Which kind of says that they’re just as oblivious to the song’s underlying meaning as my college friend. Not a love song, guys, but a creepy-ass stalker song, which means that it’s made even creepier (and not in a good way) to hear it done ballad-style.

I don’t mean to beat down the band solely for their interpretations of somebody else’s songs, by the way. I’m just a bit disappointed, is all, given that Know Nothing Stays the Same saw Marsh & co. tackling everybody from Phil Collins to Stevie Wonder to the Top Gun love theme and doing it with style. Hell, their version of “Take My Breath Away” pretty much erased the imaginary line separating over-the-top ’80s pop from ’00s emo, and I salute them for acknowledging how close their music veers to that old-school schlocky stuff. With that in mind, when I put Dressed Up in I fully expected to enjoy the heck out of “Black Hole Sun” and “Every Breath You Take”; didn’t happen.

(Spoiler Warning: In the interests of your sanity and overall love of music, dear reader, I strongly urge you to forego listening to the “hidden track” stowed at the end of the disc. All it is is another version of “Black Hole Sun,” except that whoever’s singing apparently doesn’t know the words and they can’t sing. Ouch. I swear to God, it’s like really bad karaoke. Save yourself the pain and just hit “Stop” after track 15. I’m only blowing the “surprise” ’cause I love you, man, and I don’t want to see you hurt.)

But hey, I can’t complain, overall. In spite of all my qualms about this disc, there are some shining moments. Opener “Your Love To Sing (Slow Version)”‘s one, a sweet, gentle, celebratory paean to the way a lover genuinely loves to sing, and Marsh’s vocals fall somewhere in between Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Zookeeper/ex-The Gloria Record’s Chris Simpson. Another, “Chin Up” hooked me in quick with it’s quiet, low-key-but-insistent feel, coming off like my favorite Death Cab for Cutie songs.

Oddly, though, the show doesn’t really start ’til after the band muddles through both covers (and a handful of acoustic versions and a “premix” of In Motion‘s “Sleep”; what the hell’s a “premix”?). When “May I Have This Dance” comes crashing in, it’s immediately apparent that the band, for whatever reason, back-loaded the album — that track sounds like Jimmy Eat World circa Bleed American/Jimmy Eat World, and the followup, “That Awful Memory of Yours,” is similarly hard-charging.

At the album’s absolute peak, Copeland pulls out all the stops for “Second Star To The Left, Go ‘Til Morning,” which blows the first half of Dressed Up right out of the water. The song roars and rages like the band forgot to bring the acoustic guitars and string section to the rock show, and thank God for it. Listening, it’s like I’m back in the “glory years” of emo all over again. And actually, that makes sense, since the song’s apparently from back then — come to think of it, all three of the best rock tracks on here are leftovers from back then, rebooted for 2007. Weird.

Weirder still, the band follows up that blast of energy with two awesome versions of tracks from Beneath Medicine Tree, an acoustic rendition of “Brightest” and an “alternate” take on “When Paula Sparks” (which is, admittedly, one of my favorite tracks from Tree). The latter is chiming and pretty, with a great, addictive, sing-it-under-your-breath chorus (and yeah, it’s not that different from the original, but the original’s great enough that I don’t care), and the former is awesomely melancholy and crushed. Even though the lyrics sound happy, the stark instrumentation and Marsh’s beautifully broken-down voice puts the lie to ’em, making you wonder how sure he is that things are really perfect.

The original version, to my ears, is more confident, a narrator who’s moved on from a past relationship laying the facts out for an ex-lover who’s come back around — not the Dressed Up version, though. And that, ladies and gents, is how you do an alternate version of a song — you mess with it, so much so that you change what the song means. (Hrm. Come to think of it, maybe that’s what the band was attempting with “Every Breath You Take,” too. Sorry, y’all, but that one just didn’t pull it off.)

Now, it may be that I’m still flying from the joyous roar of “When Paula Sparks,” but I find myself enjoying the DJ Cakeface (gah, what a name…) remix of “Thanks To You.” While the “original” version earlier on the disc skipped past me without leaving much of an impression, the remix makes the track seem more deliberate and thoughtful, more grateful, even. The slight processing on the vocals and the warm, echoey, Dntel-but-not-as-hyper beats really emphasize what the song’s really meant to be, which is a heartfelt word of thanks to a friend/lover.

In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter that much that Dressed Up & In Line doesn’t “hang” like a real full-length — we do live in the age of the song-as-digital-single, after all. Buy the album for the second half and the couple of good tracks near the beginning, and then you can put just those on your MP3 player. When you hit “Shuffle” and “May I Have This Dance” comes on, who cares if it really fits with the rest of the disc it’s on, right?