Almost Honest Post Beatles Cover “Wait”
I’m not sure I believe in ‘sacred ground’ in terms of some music being untouchable, but if I did, Rubber Soul would certainly qualify. Whatever folk influences The Beatles had internalized from their association with Bob Dylan and others of the day as they moved from their earlier mop-toppery and the British Invasion toward the pioneering, codified psychedelia-with-a-budget of 1966’s Revolver, Rubber Soul is for my money among the tightest pop-rock albums of all time. And you can argue against that, or tell me The Beatles are overrated. Fine. Whatever you think of their work, the impact they’ve had on all of rock and roll since speaks for itself and will not be denied. They’re the wall on which going-on six subsequent decades of rock have been scribbled. A collective Mozart, able to speak on a personal level to millions of people.
The original version of “Wait” appears toward the end of Rubber Soul — which on most days is my favorite Beatles record — immediately following “In My Life.” It is a pinpointed, two-minute-and-15-second Lennon/McCartney breakout that carries the lushness of the song prior in its vocal harmonies, but gives a kick of tempo leading into the album’s final movement, leading toward the culmination with the less-discussed-and-more-problematic-in-hindsight “Run for Your Life.” By then, the circa-half-hour LP has already made the journey through “Drive My Car,” “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” “You Won’t See Me,” “Think for Yourself,” and so on, but Rubber Soul is a front-to-back listen, and side B holds up, with “Wait” recalling the straightforward, lifted-from-girl-group pop-soul of their first two full-lengths, but filtered through the burgeoning maturity in their craft and general expansion of their sound. In two years they’d do Sgt. Pepper. In five, they’d be done. Rubber Soul captures an amazing, transitional moment, and is beautiful besides.
I’m generally wary of Beatles covers not by Nina Simone, but Pennsylvania’s Almost Honest do well in making the source material their own. Their version of “Wait” restructures and expands on the original, rearranging for a heavy rock framework and putting emphasis on groove. Almost Honest had plenty of funk to share on last year’s The Hex of Penn’s Woods (review here), and there’s a bit of that here too, and the song is malleable to it. You’ll find the track at the bottom of the post, of course. PR wire follows here:
US Heavy Fuzz Rockers ALMOST HONEST Release Cover of The Beatles’ ‘Wait’
Pennsylvania-based groovy heavy rockers ALMOST HONEST have released a cover version of The Beatles’ ‘Wait’!
Band comments on the song: “We wanted to take our influences in Red Fang and Alice in Chains and bring them into this cover/reimagining. This is what we came up with. We kept the vocal harmonies relatively the same so it would give it the same feel. We reworked the riff to make it sludgy with a pinch of grunge. We also wanted to have a shredding solo at the end which was not in the original. We created a riff to go behind it. We wanted that riff to slowly fade to give the listener time to reflect.”
Almost Honest’s third full-length, The Hex of Penn’s Woods, was released last year via Argonauta Records. The very last copies of the colored vinyl are available HERE: https://www.argonautarecords.com/shop/vinyl/689-almost-honest-the-hex-of-penn-s-woods-colored-vinyl.html?search_query=almost+honest&results=1
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