What the Brothers Sang

Bonnie "Prince" Billy has made a career out of blowing apart people's expectations and doing things as idiosyncratically as possible. His vocal timing, his pitch, and his phrasings hail from the Bob Dylan tradition of ignoring what would be the smoothest way to the harmony. With Faun Fables' Dawn McCarthy on hand to share the vocal stage, the duo, with professional session musicians behind them, work through The Everly Brothers' catalog. Except these aren't the songs best known to the world but often material from the Brothers' '60s era, when they were releasing albums to a more selective audience. Fans of the original songs may find these covers occasionally unrecognizable, though "Somebody Help Me," "Devoted to You," and the most-known song here, "So Sad," cling closer to the traditional lines. "Kentucky" is slow and haunting. "Just What I Was Looking For" throws together a grand arrangement redolent of countrypolitan music from the '60s.