When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Or, in the case of Andre Pettipas and the Giants, remake your past releases. Their new album, Covid Cuts, has the band reimaging their past hits while making the best use of their time in quarantine.
Like most bands this year, Andre Pettipas and the Giants found that their plans were subjected to some drastic changes.
Their sophomore release, No Fools No Fun, produced by Brian Moncarz (The Tea Party, Our Lady Peace, The Trews) and guest producer John-Angus MacDonald (The Trews), was planned to be released, but that option was taken off the table while the country went into quarantine lockdown.
“We were supposed to be releasing our sophomore album, along with a GIANT announcement in the early spring with festivals and a tour across the country to promote its release,” says Pettipas.
“We have decided to postpone the release until we can tour the sucker and do it the way we intended. We feel the album really helped capture the energy of our live show and wanted the release to go hand in hand with that.
“That being said we wanted to release some material for our amazing listeners who have been so patient and supportive of us over the years.”
Enter the Covid Cuts EP.
The band took the opportunity to treat their hits to something of a glow-up; giving them a second life by re-recording, producing, and mix them from their own homes.
Just five songs long, the EP gives these tracks a rare “what would you do if you could do it all over again” opportunity. In many cases that meant bringing in additional name-drop-worthy artists like Ashley MacIsaac and Leith Fleming-Smith. In other cases, songs, like “All This Laughter” and “Richelieu,” were simply updated to better reflect how they’re currently performed live.
The band also revisit “Answers” which they explain turned out to be the very first song to be completed as an official Andre Pettipas and The Giants tune.
“[‘Answers’ is] a song about life falling apart in my early 20s: the brain virus I had, trouble with the law, and all of the fun that comes with those growing pains,” says Pettipas.
“We asked our friends Hayley MacLeod (fiddle) and Ashlynn Baird (tenor snare) to take part in this song. We gave the song a bit of an Alt-Country-meets-Eleanor-Rigby approach.”
Andre Pettipas and the Giants also slip in a cover of The Romantics’ “Talking In Your Sleep.”
“Our bud, Ashley MacIsaac had suggested during a live stream that we should give this song a whirl so I suggested we work on doing a cover together to end this Covid Cuts album,” says Pettipas. “He was all-in off the hop so we got to work and asked our good friend, and honorary Giant, Leith Fleming-Smith, to be part of the track. He hopped on board with killer synth and vocoder tracks to complete the lineup for the final cut.”
For a band that’s already known for their already polished sound, it’s interesting to see the approach they’d take when taking a second look at their own material and a great tease ahead of their proper sophomore release.