DONKEYING AROUND

Review of Gov’t Mule’s Dark Side of the Mule

by Andrew Grant

There are some bands whose names you see all the time in your father’s music collection, but no distant daddy issues or Oedipal complexes will bring you to the point of actually listening to them.

Among these bands is Gov’t Mule, a powerful, mysterious name. What even is a gov’t mule? A government mule? How did it get into office? Nobody voted for it. Could “gov’t” be a Scottish mangling of “covet”? The mule on the cover of the album leaves the lady mules jealously “goveting” his tight mule body for their very own.

Dark Side of the Mule is a December 2014 release of a selection of Pink Floyd covers. The name, however, is not enough to attract people, which is why the cover prominently features an image of a healthy, young, sexy mule in a grassy field, which resides in a great space triangle reminiscent of classic Pink Floyd albums.

The album itself contains many of Pink Floyd’s greatest hits performed by Gov’t Mule, along with all the fun of staring into the dark side of a mule and eating it out a little. The record is a good time with covers that have enough contrast between soft and hard passages to make all the bars powerful.

However, it has none of Pink Floyd’s substance or atmosphere, with precious little of Gov’t Mule’s own thrown in with few noticeable solos. Despite the best album name and artwork of our time, Dark Side of the Mule does nothing for its creators or its listeners.