COVER versions give an artist two choices - play it safe paying homage to their heroes, or rip up the rule book and make a song their own.

Decades on from his firebrand youth fronting The Jam, Paul Weller remains a hero to many as he settles into his rock dotage.

With his gruff voice and tastefully-fussy guitar playing, Weller on record may be a dead ringer for Eric Clapton these days. But, rather than being a bluesophile, it's 1970s soul and funk that lights his fire.

So his covers album Studio 150 sees him going for a vintage sound - stripped down grooves, Hammond organs, and warm brass and strings.

He successfully croons Rose Royce's Wishing On A Star and funks it up on Gill Scott-Heron's The Bottle and Sister Sledge's Thinking Of You (the only contemporary-ish song here is by his chum Noel Gallagher).

But the predictable renditions of Neil Young's Birds and Dylan's All Along The Watchtower bring things disappointingly back into the worthy, but dull, category.

The Twilight Singers are the current guise of cult American singer Greg Dulli, joined by Mark Lanegan, late of Queens Of The Stone Age.

She Loves You sees them opt for songs you would never expect veteran indie rockers to tackle (Bjork's Hyperballad, Mary J Blige's Real Love), champion the obscure (Hope Sandoval and Martina Topley-Bird) and have a stab at old standards Summertime and Strange Fruit. Their maverick spirit and Dulli's outstanding voice pull it off with style.

Updated: 11:09 Thursday, September 09, 2004