FREEDY JOHNSTON -- My Favorite Waste of Time
(street: 02.26.08)

MY FAVORITE WASTE OF TIME, the new all-covers album by FREEDY JOHNSTON, is a rockin' sprint through ten classic love and love-esque songs by Marshall Crenshaw, Paul McCartney, Tom Petty, Matthew Sweet, and other deities. It was recorded in Nashville with legendary bassist Bob Babbitt, drummer Ed Greene, and a whole van-load of great guest musicians.

Village Voice review: Let's face it: Discs of cover tunes have had the stench of death about them lately, primarily a desperate cry from heritage acts starving for airplay. Poetic, story-oriented singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston, author of the certified classics Can You Fly and This Perfect World, sidesteps such muck. Firstly, he has another CD of original gems in the offing next year. And on My Favorite Waste of Time, he's carefully chosen tracks by some of his heroes, with results sunnier than Johnston's own dark, tricky songs: beautifully sung, unfussy, and fun, all done out of love. Johnston drains the excess sugar from Bacharach’s "Do You Know the Way to San José," adding a mocking pedal steel and turning it into a bittersweet cowboy song. Matthew Sweet's "I've Been Waiting" gets a band-like horn section, underscoring the original's warm spirits. Cole Porter's "Night and Day" is a summer breeze of a samba. Could Time have used one less McCartney song? Yep—a little whimsy goes a long way. But with definitive versions of Marshall Crenshaw's title tune and NRBQ's super-horny "I Want You Bad," surely that's just quibbling.