• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

May 24, 2016 Various Artists By Dan Lucas

How to pay tribute to the group with perhaps the most obsessive, meticulous, and passionate fans in music history? Not to mention a group with a ludicrously expansive discography: Grateful Dead recorded 22 studio albums between 1967 and 1990, and put out more than 140 in total.

Comprising 59 songs over a running time of five and a half hours, Day of the Dead‘s scope means Deadheads are as certain to find something to appreciate as they are something to hate. On the other hand, the sprawling nature of this compilation, curated by The National‘s Aaron and Bryce Dessner, makes the format a fitting tribute to the Dead’s vast back catalogue whether the music holds up or not.

The thing is, the album’s vastness works against it too. The liner notes mention “the Dead’s largely white middle class audience” and that is largely reflected among the contributing artists here. The National, Wilco, The War on Drugs, Yo La Tengo, The Flaming Lips, Arcade Fire, Stephen Malkmus, Grizzly Bear, and Perfume Genius all either contribute or lend members to the project and the result is that the track listing reads like a who’s who of white, middle age indie. All are fine musicians, of course, but passing 59 songs through this lens means that far too much fails to stand out and unfortunately becomes filler.

There are standouts, both good and bad. The National’s take on “Morning Dew” from the Dead’s eponymous debut album captures Jerry Garcia’s warmth perfectly and Matt Berninger’s baritone adds a weighty sense of dread. This is the Kit deliver a haunting version of “Jack-a-Roe”; Tunde Adebimpe, Lee Ranaldo, and Friends soar on “Playing in the Band,” and Bela Fleck’s banjo-led take on “Help on the Way” is an all-too-rare reinterpretation.

On the other hand, the likes of AM radio acts such as Mumford and Sons—marginally less awful than usual but still not actually good—on “Friend of the Devil” and late-era-Dead collaborator Bruce Hornsby offer very little reason to have avoided the cut.

Day of the Dead could have been an outstanding tribute had it been released in shorter segments, á la Wilco and Billy Bragg’s Mermaid Avenue. As it is, while its overblown format is in a way apt, it overwhelms. (www.dayofthedeadmusic.com)

Author rating: 6.5/10