String Cheese Incident - Trick or Treat: Best of the String Cheese Incident

I have a love-hate thing going with albums of cover tunes.  For whatever reason I always get sucked into them and then end up disappointed.  Typically I’ll end up liking 3-4 tunes, not enough to keep listening to the entire album.  I think the biggest problem is that when you have one or two covers within an album of originals it’s not a huge deal if they’re not that great, but when you have a whole album of them you aren’t really satisfied - either the band sticks too close to the original or you don’t hear any remnants of the original song other than the lyrics.

Thankfully, the String Cheese Incident’s new album Trick or Treat: Best of the String Cheese Incident, primarily made up of live cover songs from their annual Halloween concerts, balances the two, keeping each cover true to the original while keeping their own signature sound with them.

The fact that the songs are live helps things.  Live performances are where the band really shines with their usual great instrumental work.  The songs vary from classics (”Come Together”, “Exodus”) to more contemporary tunes (”Hot in Herre”) and an incredible version of a Miles Davis song (”So What”).  The real standout is a version of the Beatles’ “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” that starts out with an extended intro based on the calliope type music in the middle of the song before launching into the first verse.  Even a song I’m incredibly tired of hearing, “War Pigs”, is given new life.  On the other hand, the version of “Rock the Casbah” kind of stumbles, lacking the emotion that the other songs have.  The String Cheese Incident originals are up to their usual high standards, fitting in nicely with the other songs.

I wouldn’t immediately recommend this as someone’s first String Cheese Incident album - that would be their excellent Carnival ‘99 - but this release is something both newcomers to the band and long timers can enjoy.