Dave Depper - The RAM Project (2011)

It’s not impossible for a musician to successfully make someone else’s song their own. Florence and the Machine built her career off the back of a Candi Staton tune; on Strange Little Girls Tori Amos records male songs from a female perspective; War Child revitalise with a unique spin; and countless artists have added melody and spice to material otherwise lacking.
Alternatively some covers fail catastrophically, or worse they make no impression at all. It seems too easy to become complacent and haplessly imitate an original recording, especially if the track was blooming brilliant in the first place. Love an artist too much, and your well meaning project becomes a senseless idolisation, as self-indulgent as it is unnecessary.
And so Dave Depper faced more than one dilemma when he set out to cover Paul McCartney’s celebrated 1971 classic Ram. If Depper’s name is going to be recognised at all, it’s in conjuncture with The Decemberists and Norfolk & Western, and not as a solo artist. He has no established ‘sound’ to rely on. More importantly he’s launching his career with music originally recorded by the most prolific member of The Beatles. That’s no small feat for a man whose current fan base is limited to the boundaries of Portland.
Unfortunately – and somewhat inevitably – Depper fails to make his own impression on the album. Faced with songs that border pop-rock perfection, he had little choice but to replicate them almost to the minute – and that’s what he’s done. On the rare occasion that his personality shines through (‘Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey’) it actually blemishes the song. A drugged, atmospheric number, Depper has plugged it with a faux-English accent that’s mimicked badly. Elsewhere a modern production adds new vitality to ‘Too Many People’ and ‘Eat At Home’, but not enough to deter away from McCartney’s first take.
Essentially anyone with musical prowess and a penchant for McCartney’s music could have produced The Ram Project. Depper establishes himself as a technically profound musician and an able understudy, but by honouring the original so impeccably he’s undermined his own talent. If The Ram Project reminds its listener of one thing, it’s of McCartney’s overriding superiority.