Donny Who Loved Bowling: Mythical Hollywood character or inspiring avant-garde band?

April 16, 8:24 PMSalt Lake City Pop Culture ExaminerVince Font

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Donny Who Loved Bowling.

Coen Brothers enthusiasts may instantly recognize the name Donny Who Loved Bowling as a character from the duo's much-beloved 1998 cult classic "The Big Lebowski", but fewer will have heard of the band of the same name.

Based in Chicago and Austin, Donny Who Loved Bowling is an avante-garde garage band comprised of two guys with a lot of wit, loads of musical ability, and just the right amount of audacity required to emblazon their inimitable initials on the landscape of independent music. For the last 10 years, Joe Griffin and Christopher Petkus have been collaborating on strange and lovely musical projects via long-distance, and by the magic of high-speed internet collaboration have now released their latest offering unto the world.

"Butcher Covers" is the title of the band's latest project, an album of (you guessed it) covers that run the gamut from eclectic to plain strange. In taking a handful of mostly obscure songs from mostly famous artists, the band manages to accomplish two things that an awful lot of bands fail miserably at when recording an album of covers: remaning true to the spirit of the original source material, and at the same time making each song distinctly their own. Thus, spinning each and every composition on its proverbial ear.

The title "Butcher Covers" is a fun play on the controversial cover of the 1966 Beatles album "Yesterday and Today" which featured the band dressed in butcher smocks holding decapitated baby dolls and slabs of raw meat, all grins. Remaining true to one of their musical inspirations, the guys in Donny Who Loved Bowling have not only recreated the original album cover with a twist, but they've also paid tribute to the Fab Four (in a roundabout, two-degrees-of-separation sort of way) with their updates of Paul McCartney's "Temporary Secretary" and Yoko Ono's "Mrs. Lennon".

Dipping into the 60s long enough to deliver modern (and extremely experimental) versions of The Monkees' "For Pete's Sake" and former Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett's "Late Night", the duo moves seamlessly into 80s territory with their frenetic take on The Police's "Mother", a not-so-loving ode to domineering motherhood. The album's musical timeline takes a sharp detour with its nod to Hound Dog Taylor's classic "Give Me Back My Wig", but instead of anchoring the track with blues riffs and scratchy vocals, it's all keyboard gadgetry, wicked electric guitar and distorted vocals as the band drags this down-home ditty headfirst into the 21st century, pulling off a truly transportive interpretation and the album's finest moment.

Leaving no stone unturned in their bid to produce what could be one of the most strangely compelling collection of covers in recent rock history, Donny Who Loved Bowling next turns to the mad genius of Daniel Johnston. The final song is a cover of Johnston's "I Did Acid With Caroline", an irresistably catchy tune that succeeds in creating the musical equivalent of an acid trip (albeit lasting only five minutes instead of 12 hours and leaving the listener perfectly in control of their mental faculties).

Donny Who Loved Bowling's "Butcher Covers" is presently being offered as an mp3 download-only release and can be found at itunes, Amazon.com and CD Baby.