Songs We Should Have Written

Covers albums are tricky. It’s more than just playing somebody else’s music well; you need to pick songs that lend themselves to reinterpretation. So kudos to NYC post-punk gutter-rats Firewater, who approach the tunes on Songs We Should Have Written as if they’ve got an argument to make. They perform a cool little inversion of “The Beat Goes On,” bemoaning the transitory pop thrill that Sonny & Cher celebrated. Unsteady sitar lines stagger through “Paint It Black,” as the band turns the Stones tune into the funeral dirge it has long been begging to be. Even Lee Hazelwood’s downer classic “Some Velvet Morning,” which seems almost too well suited to Firewater, is enhanced with a hungover grace. Only their competent “Folsom Prison Blues” comes off as a little unnecessary; everything else feels like not only songs they should have written, but ones they actually did.