It's almost impossible to imagine someone writing a sadder breakup song than Joni Mitchell's "Blue."  So on her upcoming (almost) all covers album Jukebox, Cat Power's eternally broken-hearted Chan Marshall didn't even try. Featuring Marshall's sad-eyed saunter through Mitchell's classic as well as her take on songs by Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, and James Brown, Jukebox is a sweet, sad, and resolutely unsmirking success. It's also an anachronism. Sometime around the turn of the century, covers came to exist more as vehicles for YouTube-pandering irony (e.g., last year's Alanis Morrissette "My Humps," or Mandy Moore's "Umbrella") than as opportunities to air out good songs.  Marshall's beautifully earnest renditions recall when bands covered songs largely because--wait for it--they liked them. Indie touchstones Dinosaur Jr. and the Minutemen rocked the Cure, Peter Frampton, CCR, and Steely Dan; the Clash exploded their reggae and rockabilly favorites; David Bowie, John Lennon, and the Band all released entire albums of loving remakes and they all did it without engaging in any cleverer-than-thou condescension of the goofball covers regularly popping up on blogs.

Even when covers don't come slathered in sarcasm, they often wilt under the pressure of self-conscious self-importance. Call it tribute album syndrome. You can hear the affliction all over the recently released soundtrack to the Dylan-inspired I'm Not There, where, with scattered exceptions, the assembled indie royalty sings his Bobness like they're doing homework. Similarly, for all its counter-intuitive charm, the Dirty Projectors' Rise Above, an arty restyling of Black Flag's Damaged, sounds like someone trying to stuff Henry Rollins into a thrift store baby cardigan. In her sultry, world-weary way, Marshall's found the middle ground between small jokes and big statements. She simply sings the songs, never stooping to cross her fingers behind her back.

Maybe the cover version irony overdose has to do with the popularity of its slightly hipper cousin, the mash-up. Unpredictable juxtapositions are ripe for humor, and in the hands of someone with a real sonic vision, like Girl Talk's Gregg Gillis, mash-ups can be explosive fun. But Gillis is a rare case. Most mash-ups never transcend mere gimmickry. Case in point: the new gangsta-Bowie mash, "Thuggy Stardust and the Hustlers from Mars," which has been forwarded to me a handful of times in the last week. Hearing it made me wish more musicians focused on mashing-up solid melodies with interesting chords before they worried about reconfiguring older material. What Marshall understands, and many modern-day mashers and coverers don't, is that speaking through someone else's words doesn't have to mean telling a joke. And that's a lesson worth repeating.