AJJ have released a new single entitled, "I Wanna Be Your Dog 2," accompanied by a cover of Guided By Voice's, "Motor Away." You can check out the tracks over at their Bandcamp.
Like an impotent desire to escape a year of quarantine and bad news with some sort of spontaneous road trip, the band's cover of Guided by Voices' Motor Away sneaks into our awareness with a whisper. It builds and thrums; it does not quite crescendo or conclude. It plays out like a half-formed thought, like the realization that even if we mustered the will to drive ourselves into the horizon, there ain't many places to go right now. As with all great covers, it takes the singular vibes of the original and places it in the context not just of AJJ's songcraft, but in our contemporary timeline.
The titular track presents us with a mutt that's mellowed considerably since we may have met him via Iggy and his Stooges. This dog just wants a warm pile of laundry to roll in; he probably wants to be let out just as you are settling down with a beer and the remote. As the mid-song solo and accompanying air-drumming remind us, the sort of love that lets us be one another's annoyance can be a fucking awesome thing.
