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Over 100 celebrated artists from the art, music and skateboarding world all coming together to help Project LOOP raise money for a skatepark for the kids of Taylor, Texas.

LOOP Students wrote letters to over 100 artists around the country to work on raw skateboard decks provided by CreateAskate. The finished works will be auctioned off to raise funds.

Norah Jones, a singer who personifies "smokiness", and Green Day bawler Billie Joe Armstrong might ruffle some Americana feathers with this "reinterpretation" of a 1958 Everly Brothers album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us. Let them ruffle. These usurpers harmonise like an alt-country dream – who knew Armstrong could turn his hand to two-part folk-roots vocalising? – and, as a male/female duo, they take the songs to places Phil and Don couldn't. Backed by low-key drums, piano and pedal steel, the pair inject dark sensuality into folk staples such as Barbara Allen and Roving Gambler; further on, Jones's slow, sorrowing lead vocal on I'm Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail wonderfully conveys the pain inflicted by a perpetually errant son. As a bonus on that last, the backing banjo and violin reach a ragged crescendo, causing chills. More challengingly, the material inclines toward bleakness, with death, disease or heartbreak as standard; and the pace is unremittingly slow. Anyone feeling blue had best avoid the funereal creep through the murder ballad Down in the Willow Garden.

Review at The Guardian: HERE