Music Review // Hollis Brown "Don'tcha Bother Me" (In The Aftermath)

While it can take a certain amount of dedication to cover only one song of another artist- which in and of itself can either help or hinder you musically- there are very few out there able to cover entire albums.   If you were to sit down and count the number of artists who have covered either "Paint It Black" or "Under My Thumb" by The Rolling Stones, you'd likely come up with a large number and there are even more who are less known that have likely done so as well.   Hollis Brown has taken upon the task of not just covering those two songs but covering every song off of the 1966 album "Aftermath".

"Don'tcha Bother Me" has a gritty, southern feeling blues way about it.  I imagine it being the type of song you'd hear coming out of New Orleans and just that idea of artists such as Muddy Waters or B.B. King, but you know, in a Rolling Stones way.   Hollis Brown does a great job of paying tribute to the original song by only sort of modernizing it a little bit to put their own spin on it while keeping it true to the original in a larger scale.   Musically, this is a stand out cover because of how it can be both so similar and so different from the original at the same time, something you must hear to fully grasp.

One of my other favorite parts about this song is that it isn't a Rolling Stones song that everyone knows.  Sure, Hollis Brown will cover those songs as well but to put this out into the world, if you hadn't heard the other singles before this one, and this became your introduction to Hollis Brown, you might not even know it's a cover.  So then that would not only open up the world of Hollis Brown to you but it would also perhaps take you to a place created by The Rolling Stones which you previously didn't know existed.  In a grand scheme of things sense, this song could open up a new generation to a sound the likes of which they've never heard before.

I truly believe that more artists should cover an entire album instead of just one song.  I understand why they don't, because it's quite the undertaking, but also there is that risk that you become a band such as Alien Ant Farm, who are perhaps more well known for their cover of a Michael Jackson song than any song they wrote themselves.   But still, what Hollis Brown is doing with the entire album which is forthcoming is keeping the past alive while preserving the future, but this song is just a strong part of that because it's one of the lesser known songs by the original artist.