Jonathan Coulton - Some Guys (2019)

Internet musician extraordinaire Jonathan Coulton is back with a new album for 2019. On the heels of a successful Kickstarter campaign, the new record Some Guys, a collection of ’70s soft-rock cover songs performed as close to the originals as possible. If anyone can pull something like that off, it’s Jonathan Coulton. His previous album Solid State leaned into a softer performance and he’s been keeping busy writing songs for SpongeBob SquarePants: the Musical and being the in-house co-host/troubadour for NPR’s Ask Me Another, so a new Jonathan Coulton album is something worthwhile.

From his earliest days in 2005, he’s shown off his strong original songwriting and performance skills. Songs like “RE: Your Brains,” “IKEA,” “The Future Soon,” “Skullcrusher Mountain,” and basically all of his songs expertly blend rock, bluegrass, folk, comedy, tech and nerd culture to create a truly original body of work. You can listen to all of them for free at Coulton’s music page.

Coulton has already demonstrated his cover song prowess with perennial favorite “Baby Got Back” and we can all be assured that he’ll handle each of these soft rock tracks delicately and with finesse. As Coulton writes in the official announcement:

The album was produced by Solid State producer Christian Cassan, and I have to say, it sounds amazing. Most of the instruments are played by him and me, but we brought a few friends in for the stuff that was too hard. The rules: same keys, same tempos, same arrangements (as best we could manage). We hired real strings and real horns. We engineered and mixed in a way that we felt was faithful, but not slavish, to the original recordings, so the effect is this thrilling combination of old and new. I hope you like it as much as I do. --NerdvanaMedia.com