Now this is how to do a cover. I've only heard a few tracks by New Jersey punk band Titus Andronicus, but this cover of “Breed” by Nirvana just might make a fan out of me. According to the band itself, their influences include Pulp and Neutral Milk Hotel, but I have heard exactly one song by Pulp and nothing whatsoever by Neutral Milk Hotel, so that really doesn't tell me much- you can make of it what you will.

What I like about this cover is that it pulls off the one and only (yet so difficult) trick of all great punk rock. The thing is, anybody can just mash a few chords together and play them loud and fast. If that was all there was to punk rock, its detractors really would be right about it, because there is no intrinsic aesthetic value to playing bad music loudly.

Punk is really a lot more than this, and the reason is that great punk bands from the Ramones to Nirvana all have the ineffable ability to channel some kind of awesome intensity through those simple song structures. They can take a few chords and turn them into a stack of dynamite. They can take a song that a beginning guitarist could play and play it in such a way that it becomes a thrilling manifestation of the basic essence of rock n roll. It's never possible to put your finger on exactly how they do it. That's what the Sex Pistols did, it's what Black Flag did, and it's what Nirvana did. It's also what Titus Andronicus does with this cover of “Breed.”