Lex Allen - Photo credit: Kristy Tayler
It’s not enough to just slap a bunch of Milwaukee bands on a bill and call it a special event anymore. The city’s concert calendar is crowded with so many annual festivals and fundraisers that they can’t help but bleed together, which makes the events that go the extra distance that much more appreciated. One of them is Milwaukee Record’s annual Local Coverage concert—a fundraiser that challenges its participating bands to do a good deal more than just show up. Each is assigned to perform a short set covering one of the other artists on the bill through a draft system that guarantees some unlikely pairings.
Beyond the obvious fun factor of seeing musicians pushed beyond their comfort zones, the event is first and foremost a celebration of the Milwaukee songbook, since nothing contextualizes a song quite like hearing somebody else perform it. Without fail, all eight acts on Friday’s show at Turner Hall Ballroom, this year benefiting the Milwaukee Women’s Center, managed to connect with the material they inherited.
Jaill’s Vincent Kircher opened the night with several scaled-back reinterpretations of songs from B~Free’s 2016 album Ode 2 a Luv Affair, and his untrained warble cut a sharp contrast to the sophisticated phrasing of the originals. He didn’t attempt to match her vocal gravitas, but he found the emotion in each song, highlighting the anguish in an especially bluesy take on “No More.”
Though it buys them a lot of good will, the Girls Rock MKE alums in Negative/Positive don’t coast on the novelty of their youth. The teen trio has impeccable rock ’n’ roll instincts, which they put on display during a buoyant, feel-good set that accentuated the hookiness of Space Raft’s blustery power-pop. NO/NO, meanwhile, found plenty of common ground covering Negative/Positive. Both bands write perceptive songs about social dynamics, and NO/NO singer Cat Ries commented about how deeply she related to their songs, even in adulthood—you don’t have to be in high school to understand the frustration of jeans without pockets. The band also paid tribute to late Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan with a cover of Negative/Positive’s “So-Called Friend” styled after The Cranberries’ wistful dream-pop.
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The night was filled with surprises. It turns out that when Space Raft covers NO/NO, the result sounds an awful lot like Rush. Their set was massive and marvelous. Listening Party reinvented De La Buena’s Latin jazz as rustic Americana, while Lex Allen and his band mined some unexpected rootsiness from Whiskey of the Damned’s Celtic rock, and B~Free led suave renditions of Lex Allen’s hits as the crowd sang along with “Cream and Sugar” and “This is Our Year.”
The night ended eventfully with perhaps the most elaborate and virtuosic makeover in Local Coverage’s history as De La Buena’s nine-piece ensemble put their spin on Jaill—using the indie-rock band’s wobbly melodies as a jumping-off point for twisty, percussive Afro-Cuban instrumentals. Their dynamic call-and-response take on “The Stroller,” the stern opener from Jaill’s 2010 Sub Pop debut That’s How We Burn, felt more meaningful than just a cover. Back in 2010, Jaill was a cult band enjoying some fluke notoriety as the first Milwaukee band in ages to sign with a label of some note. And De La Buena was, as they are now, a mass-appeal live draw, fixtures at the kind of outdoor festivals that bands like Jaill used to be shut out from. The two groups lived in the same city, yet seemed to occupy entirely different worlds. After Friday’s show, the distance between them no longer seems nearly so vast.
