18. The Brave and the Bold (w/ Tortoise) (2006)

Considering that the three lowest-ranked albums on this list include two collections of covers and a reworking of old hits, I think it’s safe to say that Will Oldham is a much better songwriter than arranger. Here he partners with experimental rockers Tortoise on interpretations of Bruce Springsteen, the Minutemen, Devo, Elton John and others. And by “interpretations” this often means “adding a bunch of noise and calling it a day.”

There’s nothing wrong with noising up some classic songs. Yo La Tengo’s “Little Honda” is a perfect example. But in that case, YLT preserved and even enhanced the best thing the original track had to offer, which was its gleeful, youthful energy and inertia. The same can’t be said for Oldham and Tortoise’s cover of Elton John’s “Daniel” for instance, which is turned into a drony, repetitive soup of feedback and barely-intelligible vocals. Many of the tracks are so far-removed from their source material that it begs the question: Why didn’t Oldham and Tortoise just write all new songs? They wouldn’t be much more enjoyable, but at least they wouldn’t be entirely pointless.

The one exception is Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.” Oldham and Tortoise keep the lyrics and structure but throw out the rest, reworking the legendary Born to Run opener into a minor key dirge that bears little musical resemblance to the original. It’s so unique that you’ll barely think about the original, which is about the best metric there is for evaluating a good cover.