Without wanting to sound like a bastard, charity is a right pain in the arse, isn’t it? Well, it is. As worthy as most charitable organisations undoubtedly are, for their ethics, selflessness and redoubtable good work in difficult situations, it’s difficult to tell one over-enthusiastic student with a clipboard and brightly coloured tabard gently bullying you into direct debit payments on your lunch break from the next. And because we’re all essentially selfish swines at heart, it’s nice to get something worthwhile back in return so you’re not just left feeling used, £20 lighter a month and unlikely to contribute again. Enter War Child, the charity formed to offer assistance to children blighted by war and which came to prominence in the mid-90s with the legendary ‘Help!’ album, featuring Britpop’s brightest pulling together with exclusives and collaborations and including, amongst other things, the first outing for Radiohead’s sublime ‘Lucky’. 15 years later, at the climax of a decade tainted by the taste of war, it’s fitting that they return with a project as grand, if not grander, than that original musical endeavour.
The brief – 15 legends of yesteryear (with combined record sales of 1.4bn – fact!) pick stars of today to perform a selected song of theirs. Some, like Franz Ferdinand’s cover of Blondie’s ‘Call Me’, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s yelping rehash of The Ramones’ ‘Sheena Is A Punk Rocker’ and The Hold Steady proving where they get their whole shtick from on Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Altantic City’, are played fairly straight but not without imbuing some of the character of their new guardians. But there’s a central trio that sparkle like freshly cut diamonds, beginning with national treasures Elbow utilising their grazed, high-rise melancholy to take on U2’s ‘Running To Stand Still’, the most lauded band in the world TV On the Radio shattering and re-welding Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ amid a constant stream of sparks and Hot Chip with a brilliantly down tempo and distant manipulation of Joy Division’s classic ‘Transmission’. The overall result – expectations exceeded, generally going far beyond the genial love-in that might have been expected. So feel good about yourself – buy this album.