By Russell Barker

There would appear to be three types of covers. Carbon copies (dull), ones adapted to the artist's style (often good) and complete reworkings and reimaginings (usually the most interesting and best). 'Independents Day 08' brings together a CD of covers and a CD of new artists recommended by established ones.

First off see The Prodigy take on The Specials' 'Ghost Town'. It's an interesting slow dub groove working, and a decent effort but it suffers from having been such an amazing tune to begin with.Infadels make 'Steady As She Goes' (The Raconteurs) into a squelching electro rock thing and in doing so manage to sap all life out of the song. Kings of the cover, The Futureheads, have a go at Robyn's 'With Every Heartbeat'. It's a bit messy to be honest; the sass of the original could never be matched by the Mackem quartet. Jack Penate doesn't particularly mess with Beats International's 'Dub Be Good To Me' but his gender bending vocals, shouted backing vocals and hectic ending mark it out as a cut above. Tom Smith of Editors pulls off a neat trick of giving Prefab Sprout's 'Bonny' the grandiose style of his own band while retaining the gravitas of the original.

British Sea Power's version of Galaxie 500's 'Tugboat' has been dug out of the archives again. It mainly serves to remind what might have been with BSP, being elegant and haunting. Feeder doing 'Public Image' is as laughable and pathetic as you'd imagine. The Cribs version of The Replacements 'Bastards Of Young' is a rollicking riot you'd expect from something that's a hybrid of those two bands. Hey here's an idea. Let's have Jarvis Cocker and Beth Ditto cover Heaven 17's 'Temptation'. Great! But let's have them do it live in a toilet venue abetted by a pub rock band (this is probably the rest of the Gossip, but the description stands). What a waste.

The Go-Betweens 'Was There Anything I Could Do' suits Maximo Park, especially vocal wise. The cover is rendered fairly straight forwardly and comes out ok as it's such a great song to start with. Jose Gonzalez renders 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' in his usual fashion while Devendra Banhart give 'Don't Look Back In Anger' a Tyrannosaurus Rex hippy work over.

All this fun and games serves well as an attention grabber for the artists on the recommendations CD. The pick of these are A Human's gothic showmanship, Thomas Tantrum's girly pop and Shrag's tantruming riot grrl song. It comes as no surprise to see The Cribs recommended the latter.

The rest of the album after these first three tracks is pretty dull, with Electricity In Our Homes being especially awful, replete with a singer who can't hold a tune.

The Tenderfoot provide some respite with a lovely bucolic Super Furries style tune as does Basia Bulat with her airy, hyperactive folk tune. Laura Groves and her girly, innocent indie pop wraps things up nicely.