Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs

Early '90s alt-pop stalwart Matthew Sweet and ex-Bangle Susanna Hoffs team up once again to tinker with mutual favourites, this time covering songs from the '70s. As the lyrics in "You're So Vain" profess, they make a pretty pair; it's hard to muck things up too badly when you have two musicians with unparalleled ears for melodies who sound note-perfect together. The male-female harmonies in Todd Rundgren's "Hello It's Me" transform it into a genuinely moving piece of music, instead of coming across as wistful/mildly stalker-creepy as it usually does. Under The Covers Vol. 2 isn't entirely made up of ace material, however. Sweet falls short with his laboured imitation of "All The Young Dudes" but getting Hoffs to sing the lead in the Raspberries' power pop classic "Go All The Way" is a genius move. Now that they have the '60s and '70s under their covers, will the pair move forward to the '80s and perhaps re-imagine "Eternal Flame"? Hoffs doing Hoffs sounds more like a fantasy of Anthony Michael Hall's than a musical reality, but we'll have to wait and see.