That Fleetwood Mac Tribute Album Ain't Bad

For the last month or so, there have been two CDs sitting on the counter at Starbucks. One is a Ramones compilation, and the other is a Fleetwood Mac tribute album called Just Tell Me That You Want Me. According to my history books, the first band was supposed to wipe out the second, but there they are, side-by-side, a fine expression of the musical singularity we’ve finally achieved, where everything is cool all the time.

Put together by Randall Poster and Gelya Robb (responsible for last year's Rave On Buddy Holly), Just Tell Me That You Want Me is a picture of cool in 2012; from the old and revered (J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr joins Sonic Youth's Lee Renaldo for a fantastic "Albatross," and Marianne Faithful lends her Sister Morphine death rattle to "Angel"), to the Pitchforked-over likes of New Pornographers and their coldly brilliant "Think About Me."

In that category, you also have Antony hosing the Dixie Chicks stink off of "Landslide," Tame Impala putting a big, beautiful whammy on "That's All for Everyone" -- nicely bookended by The Entrance Band's devout "Green Manalishi" -- and The Kills pretending to be scary for their clattering deconstruction of "Dreams."

The album is all over the map, naturally, and a hell of a lot of fun. Best Coast's adorkable-at-any-cost "Rhiannon" sits next to a version of "Oh Well" that sounds like Billy Gibbons & Co. poured hot road tar all over it. Of course, we’re gleefully spanning many years, multiple line-up changes, and at least three highly distinct versions of the band in that little juxtaposition, like Kubrick's bone flashing into the falling orbiter.

It's not all great. Lykke Li slathers "Silver Springs" in echo and sleigh bells, killing the hook in the process and then putting us all to sleep. And as fun as it is hear Crystal Ark turn the towering "Tusk" into a rinky-dink 8-bit anthem, the almost decadent warmth of Washed Out's "Straight Back" is far more rewarding, possibly because we've so completely internalized a band that was, for a while, the very definition of decadent warmth. Right or wrong, you kind of expect it going in.

And that brings us to a Mac cover of yore that might be the weirdest of all, and certainly among the most luxurious. When Waylon Jennings took on "Gold Dust Woman," it was like semaphore from one mega-platinum cocaine asshole to another, carried on an AM radio wave. But it's still as haunting and powerful today as it ever was. Jennings put that out in 1978; the same year the Ramones released their fourth album, for all the trainspotters out there.