Meet Glen Campbell. Haven’t already? Well that’s a mighty shame. One of the most popular country singers in the 60s and 70s, Campbell has been plugging away on his gee-tar for some time now – so it’s probably with conscious irony that his latest release is titled Meet Glen Campbell.

 

Unfortunately it doesn’t work wonders by way of introduction. Campbell’s strength has always been his fusion of twanging country with more mainstream pop, leading to several crossover hits in his heyday. His smooth cover of Jimmy Webb’s ‘Galveston’ (on the 1969 album of the same name) was an absolute smash hit, retaining a definite country sound despite a series of slick pop conceits. It was one of a series of Jimmy Web covers from Campbell, and – indeed – one of a long line of appropriations that run alongside original material on his albums. All of which means that it’s not unchartered territory for Glen Campbell to give his spin on other artists’ work, and so Meet Glen Campbell – an album completely comprised of popular contemporary covers – is comfortable surroundings.

 

Appearing on the album are (among others) Campbell’s renditions of Foo Fighters, the Velvet Underground, Green Day and U2, which sounds like as novel a prospect as getting Johnny Cash to do Nick Cave (it happened – on 2000’s American III: Solitary Man). Yes, the promise is great - but the results are pretty average. Part of the issue is with Campbell’s track selection (selected by producer Julian Raymond), which seem almost intentionally harvested from the blandest moments of the chosen artists’ careers – there are a heap more interesting ballads from the Foos than ‘Times Like These’, ‘Jesus’ by the Velvet Underground was the only skippable part of The Velvet Underground, and ‘Sing’ is plain track even for Travis.

 

It’s a shame because if there’s one thing Glen Campbell knows it’s how to tweak pop into infectious southern toe-tappers – underneath the blandness ‘Times Like These’ is actually a pretty good cover, and the well-worn U2’s ‘All I Want Is You’ gets off sounding almost new. Standing out most proudly is Jackson Browne’s ‘These Days’, given a listenability that Nico couldn’t manage with her lumbering original. But if you’re yet to meet Glen Campbell and looking to get off on the right foot then the best idea might be to politely decline this handshake and get into Galveston instead.