Album Review: The Swingle Singers—'Ferris Wheel'

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It’s fitting that a Bjork track opens this covers album by 60s a cappella throwbacks The Swingle Singers. Bjork, after all, did this sort of thing brilliantly on Medúlla. But as The Swingles ooh and aah their way through the likes of Annie Lennox, Stevie Wonder and The Beatles, it becomes clear that they’re just not as cool as Bjork. Nick Drake’s ‘River Man’ is sublimely layered, but that owes more to Drake’s magnificent original than this interpretation. The jazz scat treatment of The Beach Boys' ‘God Only Knows’ twists a song practically made for a cappella into inventive but irritating territory. That said, there are flashes of brilliance here, to be sure.