Adrian Crowley & James Yorkston

Often covered, seldom bettered; Daniel Johnston is the quintessential cult musician. By now, most everybody knows the barmy backstory – the early chord organ demos, the sneak attack MTV appearances, the wild LSD trips and, of course, the plane crash that very nearly ended his life. Whether the indie rock world’s obsession with Johnston is merely adoration or, as some assert, the fetishisation of his deep-seated mental health issues, is a debate for another day. What’s undeniable is the man’s preternatural gift for melody.
Simply put, the irrefutable strength of his songs is the reason why they’ve been interpreted by hundreds of different artists over the years. Back in 2009, Scottish folkster James Yorkston and Dublin balladeer Adrian Crowley joined forces to record 8 of Johnston’s songs for a limited run of CD-Rs to be released at Fence Record’s Homegame festival. A few years on, Chemikal Underground have given the album a proper release, in a still limited run of 500 CDs and 500 vinyl copies.

Channeling the DIY spirit in which these songs were originally recorded, Yorkston and Crowley crafted these versions by sending files back and forth to one another and adding whatever they each saw fit. Like most covers of Johnston’s songs, the interpretations on ‘My Yoke Is Heavy’ bear scant resemblance to the originals. Daniel’s amusing, heartbreaking and deeply profound songs sound like they could have been recorded in any era whilst not sitting comfortably anywhere. It’s just one of the myriad reasons why they’ve endured for so long. To try to faithfully reproduce the idiosyncrasies of the source material would have been a fool’s errand and although these interpretations are in keeping with the spirit of the originals, subtle modifications have been made, ensuring a sense of newness.
In some cases the melody of the songs have been altered perceptibly, which can, at times, be to their detriment. If there’s one aspect of Johnston’s work that needn’t be tampered with, it’s those astonishing melodies. On ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Your Grievances’ it’s jarring at first to hear a song you’ve heard so many times sung in an unfamiliar way although, to be fair, nobody could sing it quite like Daniel. It’d probably be mortifying to hear anyone try to replicate his endearingly nasal tones.
Beneath the breezily picked acoustic guitars that form the majority of the track’s arrangements you’ll hear all manner of bizarre sounds nestling in the bedrock. Playful birdsong, twitching static, gently crashing waves recorded using a baby monitor and woozily pitched voices can be discerned bubbling up tentatively from beneath the surface. The production on ‘True Love Will Find You In The End’ is almost dubby, its disorienting delayed vocals causing a sensation of seasickness that’s not in the least bit unpleasant.
It’s this sense of mild-mannered sonic adventure that breathes a sense of relative new life into songs that weren’t exactly crying out for yet another reinterpretation. More than 35 years after he began making music, it’s evident that Daniel Johnston’s admirers and acolytes are never going to stop interpreting his work. Although some fare better than others when it comes to honouring his legacy, when the initial material is as good as it is, it’s hard to go too far wrong.