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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 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".

Sticking in 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, wic ked 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 charge of their faculties).

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

From FakeJazz.com:

Chicago noise-rock duo "Donny Who Loved Bowling" offers much more than humorous references to cult movies. Their self-described "x-perimental musik" screeches and explodes its way onto Tree Fort, a 24-track largely instrumental offering. Although the album frames Joe Griffin and Chris Petkus primarily as guitarists, they do an impressive job of creating electronic sounds that blend well with their garage-rock style. Tree Fort is not distractingly lo-fi, but any album that boasts the use of Radio Shack microphones alongside professional studio equipment is certainly one that is doing so for the sake of showing off its lack of respect for mainstream recording techniques. Experiments like this often fail, but Griffin and Petkus obviously have enough production skills that they will not be categorized as lo-fi due to lack of effort.

In addition to a unique engineering process, the songwriting style of Donny is also quite far from mainstream. With an album that begins with a declaration of "Elvis is always the king," one would expect a completely different style of songwriting. What follows is perhaps the polar opposite of anything that Elvis has attached his name to. The album is not directionless, but it does become a chore to attempt to truly discern one track from the next. Griffin and Petkus split their time between bass-driven grooves and spooky, if not downright frightening, compositions. Perhaps a result of recording in an abandoned Chicago bar, Tree Fort has an unsettling eeriness about it on the quieter tracks. The ethereal chants of "He causes things to look different so it would appear that time has passed" perfectly capture the feeling of a vacant building, while the resigned voice of "Doris Smiling" accompanied by placid guitarwork sounds equally chilling. Bass-heavy grooves, such as those found on "Don't Worry Kyoko" or "My Week Beats Your Year," are an excellent balance to these quieter tracks. While the album may be one stream-of-consciousness session after another, the grooves provided on these tracks will appeal to most any audience. In fact, the groove on "Drug Eruption" is so powerful, it's bizarre to imagine this duo as anything but a complete four-piece. Their love of Frank Zappa is also spread throughout the album, obviously evidenced in absurd tracks such as "Steve Baldwin" and "The Ballad of Weird Angie."

Although Tree Fort may ultimately be too unstructured for most listeners, there is enough diversity for the album to find a home with several different audiences. That being said, every composition on the album is overwhelming, whether pounding out huge grooves or unnerving riffs. One can only hope that Griffin and Petkus continue to stretch the sonic possibilities of lo-fi.

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