Spin is offering on Facebook a free download of covers of Nirvana's Nevermind. Dubbed Newermind, the album features the likes of the Meat Puppets, Foxy Shazam, Menahan Street Band, the Vaselines, Surfer Blood, and some other bands that most people probably haven't heard of.
Which, of course, leads to the question - is it worth the download?

The snarky answer is, of course, it's free. But for a more serious answer, well, it might be better to just nevermind Newermind.

1. The Meat Puppets' acoustic version of Smells Like Teen Spirit is basically a carbon copy of the original with a weaker singer.
2. Butch Walker and the Black Widows funks up "In Bloom" a bit but in doing so makes it the kind of song that you could see the Nirvana from the video (a dressed up Ed Sullivan era boy band) playing. It's not bad but this version comes off as more tongue in cheek than defiant.
3. Midnight Juggernauts' version of Come As You Are seems like something that Cobain would probably have utterly despised. Tinny electronica with somewhat random autotune.
4. Titus Adronicus brings the rock back to the proceedings but, like "Smells Like Teen Spirit", it's a carbon copy that makes you want to hear the original song. Hearing this in concert would be a ton of fun but when you're at home and have the original at your fingertips, I'm not sure why you'd opt for this version.
5. Amanda Palmer's version of Polly is interesting enough but the same complain remains. Why?
6. Surfer Blood offers another worse copy that would be cool in concert but not necessary for a record collection.
7. Foxy Shazam makes "Drain You" their own but it's the newer "their" which is more glam. I would have preferred the harder edge of their earlier work (in other words, more rock.)
8. I don't know how Jessica Lee Mayfield is but I really can't believe their wasn't a better option for this album. The rocker Lounge Act becomes boring in her hands.
9. Charles Bradley and Menahan Street Band probably score the best song with their funky version of Stay Away. At first I thought it was kind of a poor song choice for them but they did a great job with it. Did it improve on the original? No. Is it a song I'll probably want to listen to on its own? Probably not. But it's an interesting tune.
10. Telekinesis sounds like a local high school garage band covering "On a Plain". 11. Jeff the Brotherhood offers another copy of Nirvana, this time "Something in the Way" although I can honestly say that I probably wouldn't even want to hear this one in concert.
12. EMA finishes it off with another carbon copy of the Nevermind's hidden track.

So, yeah. It's obviously a losing battle to try to cover a song off of a seminal album like Nevermind but it seems like none of these bands were really up to the task of both making it their own and making it better (or, at least, different and strong enough for the cover to stand on its own.) So basically, in the end, I'm telling you that there's a download out there but telling you not to bother. I know. A waste of time. But such is life.