A high-spirited recreation of Harry Nilsson's Pussy Cats, both this tribute and its 1974 predecessor (featuring John Lennon during his infamous "lost weekend") are playful and desperate, baroque and broke -- smelling of open windows, dirty bathrobes, and overloaded ashtrays. Half the songs are covers: "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Loop De Loop," "Rock Around the Clock," and the arresting opener, a weeping version of Jimmy Cliff's "Too Many Rivers to Cross," on which Walkmen singer Hamilton Leithauser transforms his gravelly voice into a bed of jagged slate.
The centerpiece remains, of course, Nilsson's own "All My Life," an upbeat ditty that brings a greasy, Bizet-like string section into the shenanigans. They call the original the ultimate buddy album of the '70s. Well, the updated version is a pal to lost weekenders everywhere.