November 14, 2008
Aversion

A covers record usually signals one thing: That a band is fresh out of ideas, skint for inspiration and making do with what’s at hand. It’s usually a no-brainer, a trip into the studio armed only with a few favorite singles and a lot of stall-for-time hope.

Not with The Postmarks. With a clever, if somewhat gimmicky, theme to tie everything together and a style that’s able to overhaul each song in a major, major way, By the Numbers is a lot more than a quick under-the-influences rundown of what’s in The Postmarks’ collective record collection. Organized around a playful notion that catches the band tackling a song with “one” in its title in the first track, “two” in its title in the second and so forth, there’s a loose, if somewhat forced logic to the direction By the Numbers takes.

You won’t have to admire the band’s song selection to get into this 12-cut cover-a-thon, though. The Postmarks’ bedroom pop masterfully obliterates just about everything that stands in its way. More involved with reinterpreting its songs than merely performing them, The Postmarks don’t just touch on these songs. They own them. They make them their own.

Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” loses its Caribbean spices and becomes a dream-pop number that’s just as full of optimistic sunshine as the original. The Cure’s “Six Different Ways” becomes only more ethereal, as, led by singer Tim Yehezkely’s breathless vocals, The Postmarks’ lush arrangements naturally unfurl to match the song’s soul. A cut by Ride (“Ox4”) and The Jesus and Mary Chain (“Nine Million Rainy Days”) also fluidly make the transition into the band’s shy and restrained, yet full-bodied sound. It needs a little more effort to deconstruct The Ramones’ “7-11” past its ‘60s pop riffs and Blondie’s “11:59” takes on new life in pearls of heavily textured bedroom/dream pop.

The Postmarks aren’t just phoning in an easy makeshift set: The act crafts By the Numbers with all the care it’d take to build a Postmarks song from scratch. If there’s a little of the originals lost in the conversion, that’s OK: By its very nature, By the Numbers is much more of a celebration of The Postmarks’ musicianship than its influences.