JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound Break It Down on Wilco's "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart"

Cover tunes tend to fall into two camps: the relatively straight-ahead, reverent cover that shows respect and pays homage, but brings nothing much new to the table. But others fall thrillingly outside the expected and take a song into parts heretofore unknown, bringing out something in a song you never dreamed existed.

Case in point: a cover of Wilco's "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" by fellow Chicagoans JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound. Here they take Wilco's dawn of the 21st century dirge, the opening track to their opus Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and turn it into a juke-jointing, sweaty, stomping slice of soul in the great tradition of Otis Redding and Solomon Burke.


I confess to knowing nothing about JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound other than the fact that they both swing and rock, look cool, and know how to take a song and make it their own. But I plan to learn much more about them and hopefully see them live someday. You can learn more as well by visiting their MySpace page here. And you can buy their awesome Wilco cover on iTunes at the link below.

Buy JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound's "Get It Together" b/w "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" on iTunes here.

What are your favorite, most unexpected cover tunes? Rock Turtleneck wants to know. Leave a comment below and maybe we'll throw it up on the site for aging hipsters the world over to see and enjoy.

Let's take things out with the original: a fantastic live version of "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" from 2009 by Wilco: discordant, disturbing, apocalyptic yet soothing — and equally thrilling in its own way.