In 1998, filmmaker Gus Van Sant set out to make a shot-for-shot remake of the classic suspense film “Psycho,” and was met with a resounding “Why?”

Why try to remake a near-perfect film by an oft-perfect filmmaker (Alfred Hitchcock) in an oft-replicated genre (thriller)? If he succeeded, it would just solidify the genius of the original work. But if he failed – which he did – it would be an even more monumental failure than if this bomb was an original work, because he was given such a fail-safe blueprint.

This is the case of The Smithereens’ “Meet the Smithereens!” – a song-for-song remake of The Beatles’ 1964 similarly titled collection, “Meet The Beatles!” The New Jersey group recorded the same dozen tracks in the same order as the original recording. It’s similar to last year’s output by New York rockers The Walkmen, an exact replication of Harry Nilsson’s “Pussy Cats” album from 1974.

But what Van Sant and these bands failed to realize is that there are better ways to cop to an influence.

In the case of all three artists, they had never been compared to the act they recreated, and the works come across as an insulting effort to be mentioned in the same breath as their predecessors.

This is certainly the case with “Meet The Smithereens!”

The long-standing college-rock act tried its hardest to compose faithful renditions of songs such as “It Won’t Be Long,” “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” And the members succeeded to the best of their abilities, but we’re still left asking, “Why?”

Why would a band that’s been around for 27 years try to recreate the youthful excitement from one of the Fab Four’s early outputs? And more importantly, why is this the Smithereens’ first release since 1999? Did it really take eight years to game plan for an album of covers?

The results are songs that have been recorded better once before, by a band that has recorded better albums numerous times before, which all but eliminates the necessity for this record.

Maybe slipping a Beatles cover into a live set has worked in the past for The Smithereens, but when compiled together for this release, it just heightens our awareness of how great those Liverpudlian lads were – and how much further The Smithereens have to go to get there.