UNDER THE COVERS: I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (Wilco cover)

Max turned me on to this cover awhile ago. A little Googling will turn up some info on this Chicago soul band, and a rather pretentious writing voice. But let's not get judgmental about tone, because JC & The Uptown Sound really have something going here. This a different cover, but I like that. For some reason people just haven't been able to sack up when they cover Wilco (read: Norah Jones covering "Jesus, Etc.").

This a great treatment of the song. Sometimes when Max and I have sat around jamming on this track, we end up screaming and rocking on, "but still I'd be lying if I said it wasn't easy," and I think there's an energy here that JC & Co. really exaggerate (but in a great way). The triumph in the original is that this emotion is buried, with Jeff Tweedy sneaking it into the track in a veiled scream towards the end.

I'd like to take this time to challenge artists out there to cover any track from a different Wilco album. They have a bunch, and many more good songs. Take a break from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, we already know it rules.

Wilco - "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" (Original)


(For the record, the Bad Plus covered "Radio Cure" on their last album, For All I Care. But to talk about that would take away from JC, not to mention that Wendy Lewis' vocal presence on the album is an interesting turn for the midwest-jazz-crazy-awesome trio.)