Cover stories

At a time when pop-music supply exceeds demand, it’s probably inevitable that performers will turn to covering and reinterpreting already-extant songs rather than simply adding to their number.

The Australian singer-songwriter-actress Natalie Imbruglia and the American singer-songwriter-actress Nellie McKay pursue such a strategy on their latest albums. Imbruglia’s is called Male (Sony Masterworks) because its material was written and originally performed by members of the opposite sex. McKay’s is called My Weekly Reader (429), but, as only men comprise its composer roster too, it could’ve been called Male as well.

The similarities end there. There is, for instance, a generation gap. All but one of McKay’s 13 selections come from the 1960s; Imbruglia’s dozen stretch from 1970 to 2013, with half bearing 21st-century copyrights. And although both women pay homage to bona fide hits, McKay’s obscurities (Alan Price, The Mothers of Invention, Moby Grape, Richard and Mimi Fariña, Country Joe and the Fish) are obscure indeed.

A reasonable conclusion to draw from these differences is that Imbruglia is just singing songs she likes whereas McKay has something thematically significant in mind.

What that something is emerges from between the lines because McKay is an artist and therefore resistant to the obvious. But she’s not opaque. Her Moby Grape cover is “Murder in My Heart for the Judge” (replete with a few anti-euphemistic vulgarities and a whispered “I can’t breathe” à la Black Lives Matter). Her Mothers of Invention cover is the Great Society–mocking “Hungry Freaks, Daddy.” Her Alan Price covers are the satirical “Poor People” and “Justice.” A not unreasonable conclusion: She believes that the social injustices of the ’60s persist and still require radical solutions (or at least radical Supreme Court decisions).

That McKay numbers anti-homosexual stigma among those injustices is suggested by her gender-unswitched, lesbian-friendly cover of Herman’s Hermits’ “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.” (She probably intended something similar by her equally as-is cover of The Beatles’ “If I Fell,” but, according to the rules of formal grammar, the “her” at the end of the second and third verses precludes rainbow-friendly readings.)

To McKay’s credit, My Weekly Reader works well enough as music—transcends its politics, one might say—to keep it from being divisive. Much of it is delightful, with unexpected juxtapositions providing attention-holding elements of surprise throughout. And her harmonica riff on The Cyrkle’s “Red Rubber Ball” points up melodic similarities to Bob Dylan’s “I Want You” that lend the former a soupçon of cool.

The pleasures of Imbruglia’s Male are shallower. (Her airy, Susanna Hoffs–like voice is partly to blame.) But by tempering the more aggressively masculine qualities of her source material with instrumentation, time signatures, and tempi that have “feminine touch” written all over them, she emphasizes and demonstrates the complimentary nature of the sexes.

Eschewing electronica and Auto-Tune, Imbruglia gets at the charms of Daft Punk’s “Instant Crush.” Replacing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ electric guitars with acoustic guitar and banjo, she bequeaths a feelin’-groovy lilt to “The Waiting.” Meeting her fellow Aussie Josh Pyke’s “The Summer” on its own folk-pop terms, she brings a deserving 7-year-old song out from down under and shows the rest of the world what it’s been missing.

Less satisfying are the songs that were too in touch with their feminine sides to begin with. Damien Rice’s “Cannonball,” Iron & Wine’s “Naked As We Came”—what such material could really do with is a good toughening up. Or maybe being ignored altogether.