The unnamed author of the excellent classical music blog Proper Discord (added to blogroll) has a devastating critique of Renée Fleming’s new rock-covers album, Dark Hope up today. The punchlines:

In classical music, it’s the composer’s job to write the notes, the musician’s job to make a good sound, the engineer’s job to capture it and the producer’s job to let you know when everything is in the can.
In pop music, they all work together to create a sound. The notes themselves are simple, so the sound needs to be great. That hasn’t happened here, or, at least, it hasn’t been done well enough to make it work.
Covers like this are going to be compared to the originals, and the originals were all put together by people who knew how to make a band sound good.
It seems like everybody involved underestimated what it took to make a modern rock record, and it’s a shame, because the talent was there. It didn’t need to suck.