Pitchfork

In a transparent attempt to win Pitchfork's coveted "Most Fleetwood Mac-Related News Item of the Year" award, re-formed 80's skinhead-bowlers Camper van Beethoven plan to release a track-for-track cover version of Fleetwood Mac's 1979 opus Tusk.

According to the source from which we steal all of our news stories, the awesome Rolling Stone (did anyone read that N'Sync story? Such hilarity has never existed), the genesis for this odd project came in 1987, when Camper van Beethoven spent some time in a cabin near Mammoth, California with plans to work on their next album. What came out of those sessions was a "re-imagining" (to use Planet of the Apes lingo) of all 20 tracks from Tusk, Fleetwood Mac's dark double-album follow-up to Rumours. For some reason, which apparently now eludes all those involved, the tapes were subsequently scrapped.

However, following a recent Camper van Beethoven reunion tour, head Cracker David Lowery and fellow ex-Campers Jonathan Segel and Victor Krummenacher decided there was gold in them thar hills, and finally mixed and mastered the Tusk tapes. They plan to release the record on their own Pitch-a-Tent label later this year, provided all the appropriate royalty checks fall into place.

In other CvB family news, expect a new album in January from Cracker, entitled Forever, and a disc of covers (both live and studio) sometime in the coming months.