Noise Real Records have put together a tribute album to post-hardcore legends Drive Like Jehu, which was in the works before Rick Froberg’s unexpected passing but now doubles as a celebration of his life. Learn to Relax! A Tribute to Jehu comes out November 17 and features covers by Thrice, Sparta, Ways Away, Fotocrime, If It Kills You, and others. You can watch a teaser video with clips of the covers at the Noise Real Bandcamp and we’re now premiering Ways Away’s cover of “Do You Compute” from 1994’s Yank Crime.

Ways Away–whose supergroup-worthy lineup features vocalist Jesse Barnett (Stick to Your Guns), guitarist Sergie Loobkoff (Samiam, Knapsack, Racquet Club), drummer Jared Shavelson (The Hope Conspiracy, Paint It Black), and bassist Ian Smith (Racquet Club)–turn the 7+ minute song into a more compact 4.5 minute song, and really lean into the more anthemic side of post-hardcore that Sergie was embracing with Samiam around the same time “Do You Compute” came out. He says:

When we were asked to be a part of this compilation, I thought about my brother and I as kids driving across the bay bridge to go to a SF distributor called Mordam when we bought the Pitchfork 7″… I think it was called ‘Saturn’. That was 3 decades ago. Through the years we loved Pitchfork, Rocket, Obits, Hot Snakes and of course Jehu. Really, we knew anything R and R (Reis and/or Rick, lol) would likely float our boat. Learning and reconstructing this song into a more ‘Ways Away’ version was fun and a little nerve-wracking because I know many people are going to hate the straight forward ‘pop’ arrangement we settled on….like, ‘blasphemy!’. In truth, I love all the Sonic Youth-y/Fugazi-ish/Slint meanderings that we cut…myself. In a perfect world we would have recorded 2 songs for this: A) the one we did and B) only the stuff we cut as a more atmospheric version. It’s sad that the world lost Rick and we don’t get any more.

https://www.brooklynvegan.com/drive-like-jehu-trib...