Cut Loose

What. The Hell. Was That.


Doomtree have lost their minds.


You think you know an artist, having listened to them for years. You get a sense of communicated identity. You learn their inflection and tendencies, even more so when they're a local legend. Hell, in some cases, I've even kicked back and shared drinks with the odd member of the crew. You make assumptions, you feel safe, if not confident in their choices. The last crew release was a killer, a massive album that served as a landmark in the divergent Doomtree canon. When word of the available-any-second No Kings, I made the mistake of thinking "Oh sure, more of the same, but better and harder, right?"

Remember what I said about assumptions and sanity?


The leaked tracks should have been an indication. 'The Grand Experiment' and 'Beacon' signaled a darker, more nuanced tone from an already complex and dexterous crew. The video for the album cut 'Bolt Cutter' though...it's dark and disturbing. Not in the gory, over the top schlock Hollywood tries to force feed us. No, this is the kind of strangely unnerving imagery that one would think impossible to pair up with hip hop, let alone such phenomenally talented artists as these. Stalking the gritty, grimy corridors of abandoned buildings. Climbing over the walls. Dodging spotlights while looking like their minds are unhinging before your eyes. Doomtree have lost their damn minds.


It couldn't be better art.

The song itself, a multi-segmented beast of a track, is just as sinister. P.O.S. brings you into his world over frantic, broken beats. Sims lurches through ever more violent wordplay, brandishing a verbal knife in the shadows as speakers bust and distortion flairs up. Suddenly the song breaks and becomes a slinking little thing that Dessa bats around like a cat with a mouse. She owns it and dares you to take her toy away. When you think it's safe, the track breaks wide open and Mike Mictlan screams in your face over crazed dance beats, rapping face down on a dirty floor in the video. As the crew stalk the empty corridors, P.O.S. ascends a ladder into the night time city and the song continues shifting. All of this is horrifyingly cohesive.

By the time you read this, No Kings will be available. Go get it. Once you've listened to it, call the men with the nets and white coats. These rappers are a danger to society, in the best possible way.

Subterranean Dwellings

Yo.


So it's another late Sunday night as I write this. It's been another fun and productive, but ultimately busy weekend. Moving is a real thing now. Packing boxes and making trips with a stuff-to-the-gills car is a non-stop duty. The amount of thought-out, pre-planned elaborate meals has gone down significantly, so now the better half and I regularly resort to quick fixes and simple foods like oatmeal, rice and eggs. Not all at once. Although, maybe that could...nah, never mind. Anyway, point is...while stopping in at our preferred grocer's  on the way home from another round of life assessment and storage evaluation I heard a song on the honest to goodness FM radio that brought me back. It wasn't some massively famous, touchstone thing like Nirvana or the Stones or anything like that. Just a song that made me instantly relax as I thought about how I used to listen to it quite frequently. 

Like anyone, I was stressed out about going off to college. My youthful indiscretions had resulted in me spending the lead-up to my collegiate endeavors out in Seattle, living and working in the suburbs with my uncle. I loved the Northwest but the absence of a normal social routine threw me for a loop, especially when considering I was about to embark on a huge new chapter in my life. The dorms were frequently trouble - both mine and other students. Communal living is fun for only a microscopic handful of people, I think. I made my way, though. I found friends and enjoyed my classes. Going home for Thanksgiving, though, brought back a fair amount of stress. I hadn't been the best graduate - I put my parents through a lot. My friends and antagonists hadn't seen me for a very long time (more so than they'd seen each other, anyway). I wondered what had become of them.

So while all this was going on, I had a fresh musical Linus blanket I turned to, to sooth the mental inflammation, so to speak. I used to play No Doubt's 'Underneath It All' really, really loudly in the car when I went anywhere in those days. Say what you will about the emergent fashion focus and impending end of the ska/punk SoCal band during the dawn of the millennium - I still love this overlooked single. It has this smooth, rounded pillowing affect on my mind when I listen to it. All the stress I was dealing with melted away when I heard the humming and throbbing bass of the reggae posturing the band adopted. Gwen Stefani's poppy, crystal clear voice layered over the booming bass and ultra slow dub tune just turned my anxieties to molasses, an effect usually accomplished with a case of beer and a bad movie. Instead of that, I would play this song really loudly as I went somewhere anxiety-inducing and try to slow down my worries. It usually worked.

I guess it says something positive about my life that I never have to resort to blasting this song to crumble away my anxious nature. I feel better about who I am. My friends and family love me for who I am, and are always happy to see me when I come home for the holidays. When Thanksgiving comes this year, instead of sweating the possible outcomes of strange social situations, I'll gladly embrace my family for a big meal and tons of laughs, no audio pacifiers needed. I just need to finish packing boxes, first.

Orchestrations

Sometimes a song just grabs you and holds you.


It's Friday, the end of a long November week. I'm spent from packing boxes and moving furniture, a task that will only become more involving as the next week tears on. Yet as I write this, I find myself unable to turn my tunes off. There's a song that's been haunting me for a while now, and I think you need to hear it.

See, I first heard this song over the satellite airwaves a few weeks back. Initially I thought it might have been some descendant form of a Modest Mouse mutation, given the voice of the lead singer and the general feel of the track. Upon further research I found that it was actually a song by Georgia indie-rockers Manchester Orchestra off of their latest concept album Simple Math. While the eponymous single is more heartbreaking and contemplative, the single 'Virgin' has been stalking me at every turn, invading my dreams and haunting my waking hours as of late. It's the kind of ominous, foreboding heavy rocking tracks that evokes the best elements of the sturm and drang of grunge while tapping into our modern sensibilities of nuanced niche music that speaks to the cerebral listener. 

Thrumming away with lurching, swaying guitars and eerie choirs of children singing "We built this house with our hands and our time and our blood", 'Virgin' gets under your skin as it unfolds. Lead singer Andy Hull moans about our modern state and the heartbreak of a world crumbling around him while the song washes like waves, only to break into its dinosaur-stomp of a refrain. Coupled with an unsettling, iconic video, it's the kind of single that you listen to over and over to in the fear that you've done something terribly wrong. Only repeated listenings will tell you whether or not that's true.

I love this song. During the lead up to Halloween I made sure to crank it as loud as I could to wring every creepy, weepy bit of angst out of it as a form of musical penance. Check out the video and see if you don't pick up on what I mean from the imagery. It's a great single from a band that absolutely deserves a much, much wider audience.

Sick With Regret

Oh, White Stripes. How I miss thee.


What band in modernity have had an impact like that of Jack and Meg White, and with so few members to boot? It would be an easy conclusion to see that their raw, distilled power stems from the simplicity and lack of sleight of hand - this is the quintessential band for the notion of "what you see is what you get". It's always been tightly crafted, furious rocknroll pieces that get right to your primal core. That's why I, like everyone else who ever heard them, was crushed to learn that Icky Thump was to be their final album. The only consolation prize was that they went out with a bang.

As amazing as the entire album was, nothing defined the band for me like the eponymous single. Debuting in 2007, 'Icky Thump' was everything the White Stripes had become known for - relentless energy, massive guitars, bleating vocals and straight forward, bash-you-in-the-face drums. Basically, a knock out. By leading with this mastodon-like track, the two-piece proved they hadn't lost their edge as their careers reached new heights. While the world was quickly moving past the garage rock aesthetics the band had brought to the forefront less than a decade earlier, they were proving their style still had vitality in their last throes.

'Icky Thump' is Frankenstein monster of a single. By all common understanding the song shouldn't work in our over-produced, slick and glossy world of modern media. By cobbling together all these disparate elements, Jack and Meg created a song that felt just broken and dangerous enough to stand out. There's the menacing relentless thump of the verses, layered up with squirrely clavioline lines and Jack's exquisite piss-take rapping. His voice adds the perfect level of vitriolic distaste on the matter of illegal immigration as an added bonus. The single swings into a distinctively White Stripes-esque breakdown of sliding guitar riffs and slamming percussion. A series of broken and dying solos round out the song, as if to say "Solo for attention? How about I destroy my gear instead?" Despite the audacity of individuality and flaunting of convention, it works. Or maybe because of it.

I miss The White Stripes like no other. They were a rare beacon of genuine rocknroll in a homogenized, safe-for-corporations musical world. Still, as much as it pains me to say they;re no more, I can at least enjoy what they left as legacy. It blows me away to know they did tracks like this right up to the finish line.

Fakeout

I suppose this could have been written a decade ago.

Previous posts have explored the idea of the futility of discovering music in a society that lacked omnipresent web access and hyperactive culture. Trying to catch the name of a band or song on the radio or MTV was hard enough. Deciding to waste the money on an album (or even a CD single) was even more frustrating. As I've previously written about my internet endeavors, I spent a fair amount of time in college searching for long-forgotten songs and things tucked in the farthest corners of my mind. One such song, 'Pure Morning' by Placebo, was a fantastic find. It could just as easily be a modern release, to boot.

'Pure Morning' was released in 1998. Originally a B-side from a more popular single, Placebo found themselves too enamored with the song to relegate it to the reject pile. It was not only included on the album but became one of the band's most popular singles to date, along with their earlier effort, 'Nancy Boy'. They've enjoyed enduring success in their native UK and abroad, but this track was the start of their slow descent from the top - the band peaked in the late 90s, essentially. This is not a bad thing - they're still doing just fine and selling millions of albums. It just takes a little longer with our fractured media landscape. Regardless, they endure and continue to have successful tours and releases. 

So why the big fuss? I guess I just dig the song. I feel like it could have been just as popular today as it was when it was released. Were one to slip the song into a playlist on, say, AltNation on satellite radio the audience would most likely not skip a beat. Maybe that's what makes the strange track so appealing in the long run. It's a great song but perhaps it was ahead of its time. Brian Molko's voice is peculiar but memorable, both indicative of the indulgent 90s music scene and our modern quirky-for-quirk's sake hipster ideals. The bass and guitar are spacey and fuzzed out in an obtuse but catchy sound that would fit either decade. The drums bang and wallop in this wide open loop that feels like it both belongs in the era of The Verve's 'Bittersweet Symphony' and would fit on any spotlight collection in the iTunes store. The only thing out of place about the song is the video, solely for the long, slow shots of police men interrupting a suicide attempt by Molko as he steps off a ledge. It's to calm and measured for our ADD minds. Bleak and strange, absolutely. Just too calm to fit in now.

Take a listen and see if I'm nuts. Even if you disagree with my assertion that 'Pure Morning' still feels modern you'll rediscover a great, overlooked song from the end of the last decade. It was a hard time to find music in the Midwestern town I called home - forgive me for indulging my nostalgiac embrace. 

Fall Apart

No bones about it.


Fall is here and making way for that dreaded sequential terror. The W word. It's lurking just around the bend. The days are shorter. The nights are longer. More often than not the sky is overcast and we have to pull up our collars around our collective scarves to keep the ever-growing chill out of our coats. Not all hope is lost, though. There are the small, subtle things to aid us in our journey, to give us lift in our daily endeavors. For me, one small thing is the old hit by INXS, 'Never Tear Us Apart'.

Unlike other posts I won't cite here, with this 80s hit I can cite specific reasons for personal relevance. I always associate this song with Fall. The melancholic air of the lyrics and sounds. Michael Hutchence's wailing and the pulling-at-the-heart string arrangement. They convey a cold and somber time, which is only furthered by the classic video from the late 80s, which I also saw repeated viewings of during the Fall season. In it, the band struts around in pained, pretentious manner in heavy coats as they sort of perform the song. No elaborate set up, despite the decadent decade - no, in an interesting twist on convention, INXS just wandered around Prague in the cold season, performing the song in a somber setting. I love it.

The song itself is great, a real hidden gem of a pop tune from an otherwise genre busting, funky New Wave band. I love that they made this weird, morose song that stands out among their canon. It's this stealth reminder of finding beauty in the heartache of the seasons passing and fading. Every year I find myself listening to this song more in Fall than in any other time. It's surprisingly lush and gorgeous despite its cold, isolated sense of heartbreak and romance. Hutchence sells it well with his plain yet theatrical voice. The dramatic pauses are wonderful as they unleash in the understated guitar licks and pounding drums. I have to confess this might be the only time that I will go on record as staunchly in favor of the saxophone contribution. There is no way this song would be the same at all with any other instrument playing that solo.

Give in to the season. Feel it surround you, the crisp air and the leaves beneath your feet. It gets cool, yeah, but it's not a bad thing. Just try it on and see if it fits. Putting INXS on your headphones as you tromp through the fading light of Fall is the perfect addition to the season. Let it wash over you and see if I'm right. No bones about it, we're in the thick of it. Might as well make the most of it while we can. 

Deeper and Deeper

Evening, cats.


It's Friday and I've spent the day moving heavy boxes. My back and arms ache. I've had more than my share of a bottle of red (Red Truck - not a cab or merlot or zin, just red) like an adult jukebox. I can't push myself to work on a longer, more involved piece I've been putting off, as of late. Instead, I thought I'd share with you the joy that is Adele remixed as part of a Childish Gambino track.


I knew of Adele prior to this, of course. 'Chasing Pavements' had been all over the scene and the soulful young lady had made a name for herself with her old-school voice and intense inflection. I'd been crazy impressed with Childish Gambino from his album Culdesac, his phenomenal mix tapes and his work in comedy. So when he took her ascendant single 'Rolling In The Deep' and cut it up, I was a little confused. I forgot about her career and focused on his...with good reason, I'd argue.

Adele is a voice whose reputation goes far and wide among the popular culture these days. She has such clout from her talent that I felt genuinely sad when I heard that she had to cancel her recent tour and undergo major surgery on her vocal cords/throat. She's the opposite of a flash-in-the-pan - she's an artist who you really get an intense interaction from. Similar reactions stem from Childish Gambino - he's a musician who can't be confined to one simple thing. He's  not just a rapper, or DJ, or singer or comedian, or actor. The guy is insanely talented at whatever he throws himself into. I'd already been blown away by his musical endeavors. So these two forces colliding made something even more amazing.

As great as Adele's version of 'Deep' is, the Childish Gambino remix is more vibrant, more vital. It's a song that brings out different feelings and emotions from it's different dynamics than the original, as if that's not as obvious enough of a statement. Instead of a churning acoustic and plodding backing band we have Gambino setting Adele's unmistakable voice against sparse yet infectious hand claps, getting your mind into the rhythm right off the bat. He wraps her voice around a series of breaks and percussive tones that evoke DIY aesthetics like banging on pipes and sampling overheard sounds. He warps he voice using pitch-shifters and snippets of samples, rearranging the song into a more distilled, aggressive version of itself. When a break appears midway through, Gambino drops in for a verse to offer a response filled with vitriol and defiance. His rapping is a genius example of breaking convention and offering a novel back-and-forth for a kiss-off pop song. It's fantastic stuff.

Don't get me wrong - Adele made an amazing song with 'Rolling In The Deep'. I just find the Childish Gambino version, which I actually heard before the original version, to be a more defining take on the tune. Hers is canon, his is gospel. Hers is the standard, his is the ripper. He tells a story and builds on the world she created. Listen to them both and let me know what you think. 

No Worries

Hey, gang.


What's good? You feeling good? Hope so. It's weird for me to be able to write about whatever I want and not have a structured sense of goals or obligations to strive for. No grand theme or design, no overarching concept to fit in to. How about instead of a massive existential crisis I just spill the beans on a great single that you might have missed? Sound good? Gravy, let's do it.


Peter Bjorn & John, abbreviated as PB&J, are an indie rock outfit from Sweden who have been cranking out tunes for the last decade. Of all their weird and wonderful music, my favorite track of theirs is the funky little ditty 'Nothing To Worry About'. Featuring kids chanting the titular chorus, a stomping beat and some catchy tones, it's a song that gets under your skin and stays there, whether you're aware of it or not. It originally came out in 2009, as a single from their album Living Thing. I picked up a little while later, but kept hearing it even after it made its way out of my regular rotation. It's just one of those tracks you can't shake due to its infectious nature. It has these synth chords buried in its beat.

There's something so delightfully strange and gorgeous about this song I can't quite put my finger on - maybe it stems from the relentless beat of the drums in the background. Maybe it's that barely-out-of-tune chord that keeps humming. Maybe it's just the hook, the kids singing "Doing this thing, this type of thing, put a lil' money in this type of thing' that gets me. Something about it is just infectious enough that after months away from it, I hear a snippet of it in a promo for Sunny or have it come on during a shuffled playlist and I think "Oh man, I have to bump this." I don't know. It's just fun and weird.

The video accompanying the song is just as delightfully strange. Showcasing the Japanese rockabilly subculture, the clip has nothing to do with the song, yet the vibe somehow fits the sound. These guys throwing themselves with such gusto into a completely arbitrary fashion and culture scene, I guess I can relate. Isn't that all fashion and culture on a certain level? It just takes something as mismatched as this to bring it to light, I suppose.

Me, I love this song. I'd highly suggest you throw down the necessary dollar and pick it up. It's just fun enough, off kilter enough, to get you through to the weekend. Sometimes you need an out-of-left-field mood lifter. I think this bit of Swedish indie rock could help you out. Have a listen, see what's up.

Old Wounds

By all logic, this should not have worked.


I read about this cover before I ever heard about it. Just reading the words in the order they were presented forced my mind to wrap itself around a pairing so incongruous and unlikely that I had no idea how it would sound. Turned out I was making a mountain out of a mole hill - it sounded fantastic and natural. While yesterday's cover coverage was about improving on a flawed song, today's subject is about simply making the song yours. In this case, Trent Reznor ceded his old, wounded ballad 'Hurt' to the dying Johnny Cash, after the Man In Black made his mark on the harrowing song.

I still struggle to listen to Cash singing this song without being reduced to tears. His inflection, his weariness and resignation in the face of the world are so heartbreaking and beautiful that I can hardly stand to hear it. The video for the song only makes it harder, seeing the legend past his prime, a fading specter of the once-vibrant force that gave the middle finger to the world in his younger days. At its most affecting and personal moments, it's a stark reminder that all good things must come to an end, that we all go eventually. At its most serene its a song that reminds us that we take our lives for granted, that people are seeing their own lives fade before their eyes every day while we complain about spotty Wifi or bad traffic. 

Hard to beleive I get this grandiose and self-indulgent emotional roller-coaster from a Nine Inch Nails song. I always enjoyed Reznor's iteration of the final track on The Downward Spiral, though more so from the quiet and contemplative nature of the song in light of the more combative and unsettling sounds surrounding it. As a conceptual coda I loved 'Hurt', although I understood it to be a step outside of his wheelhouse at the time. It was haunting and beautiful, if bleak and overly dramatic. 

When Cash covered the song for his album American IV, the last of his series of standards and covers before his passing, the world of pop music (and music in general) sat up and took notice. This was something rare, something worth paying attention to. What could have been 'a gimmick' (as Reznor worried) became something astounding. Cash transformed the song into something larger than the original artist could have hoped; he added layers and layers of life, the years and experiences of Cash painting the song in new light. What had previously been a denoumount to a dark concept album became an achingly gorgeous letter to a world that was slipping out of Cash's grip.

I can't even make it through the song now, as I write this. It's too much. It's nice to know such significant moments like this can happen in my life, but at times it seems like to much to deal with, as though moments of such personal and human relevance are so rare as to be jarring. Listen, please, if you can. It's every bit as wonderful as it's told to be, and more.

Life Lesson

Sometimes the cover is the superior version.


I racked my brain trying to figure out which cover I could use to illustrate this example. I sorted through the usual business, looked at acoustic versions and covers by the Smashing Pumpkins and 80s new wave acts and modern dance tracks on the radio (that are just terrible). Then it dawned on me. Well, to be honest, it came on my headphones on the bus ride home. A song so infectious and sublime that I can't help but kind of bob and sway along when it comes on, even in public. For a white dude in Minnesota (in November, nonetheless) that's saying something. 

'Lust for Life' as performed by Childish Gambino is awesome, plain and simple. It's got all the things I need to love a song these days. It has some fuzzy synth opening it up. It has the multi-talented Gambino singing an infectious and sun-shiny melody about simple pleasures, like wanting a pizza and a bottle of wine. A heavy, swinging beat kicks in to propel the song along, making my dance instinctively. Gambino throws down a verse filled with equal parts wit and swagger, then cuts the whole thing off after just two minutes and forty seconds. A pop song that hits all the right marks and knows when to pull the plug, basically. I adore it, for the parts and the whole. Too bad the original is nowhere near as good.

Pitchfork would have a bird for the defiance (or maybe I'd get higher marks for dumping on their own reviews) but I just don't enjoy the original version of 'Lust for Life' by California indie/hipster/awkwardBeachBoyripoff band Girls. It just embraces all the intentionally self-aware, pretentious quirks that a wider culture pigeon holes as...pretentious, self aware and flawed. It's hard to pin down the specifics of why I find their song so grating, but I think it has to do with the intentionally shoddy production. The vocals are so intentionally sloppy and insincere that it makes me feel like the boys behind Girls can't enjoy life without making it from a safe distance. The musicianship is flawed in its sub-par delivery, substituting aloofness for talent. 

If there's one thing I can't stand in life, it's mocking insincerity standing in the way of enjoying your existence. There is a distinct difference between these hipster pretensions and genuine humor or camp. Where Girls are self-aware to a hyper degree, Gambino approaches the track with a sincerity and polish that shows his talent and appreciation for his own craft. He takes what he does seriously and doesn't want to squander any opportunity. Girls don't seem to want people to like them. Yeah, I'm obviously projecting my own insecurities here, but I'm aware of it and stand by my assertions. Life's too short for insincerity. Put on the Childish Gambino version and have a blast. It's clearly more fun.

Baby Boy

My relentless coverage of covers continues.

I've written about American Idol winner David Cook before. In short, he's the only contestant for whom I've ever had any concern. He was a fresh and welcomed change from the established bleating young starlets and barely-pubescent baby faces singing tired and retread covers. Here, instead, was a young man who had already had a relatively successful career with his own band and then on his own before finding his way onto Season Seven of the former TV juggernaut. His rise to the winners circle was fun and strange, an artist out of place in a stagnant TV competition. His versions of songs justified watching the show, I told my better half. Nah, turns out I just liked him and his music. His versions of songs were crazy good for the circumstances.

Cook had done some impressive work with the material he was handed on the show. He gave passionate performances that showcased not only his talent as a performer and musician (this being the first time contestants were allowed to play instruments) but also his ingenuity as an interpreter. His rearrangements of songs were just as entertaining as when he performed. When he introduced his cover of Mariah Carey's seminal pop hit 'Always Be My Baby', my better half and I exchanged worried looks - how was that going to work, exactly? As soon as they showed a clip of him casually strumming the tune in front of Carey (a sadly forgotten talent that has been swept under the rug too early, it should be noted) we both 'ooh-ed' in understanding. The dude had done it - he took a famous, famously female song and re-contextualized it to make sense from a male perspective. It was awesome.

Cook's performance was a stunner and a clear indicator of his front runner status. The way he strutted around the stage belting out his newly arranged ballad, there was no question he was in the lead. What had been a light and fluffy pop song (a fantastic bubblegum piece of music) had been transformed into an amazing and powerful ballad, a declaration of love. Sounds sappy, I know. Still, when he was done we were both agog. It was a game changing performance from Cook. He wasn't just a pop musician on a TV showcase. He'd made it clear that he had a wealth of talent from which to work. When coupled with an intuitiveness and insightful sense of musical savvy, it was no wonder he shot to the top the way he did.

Sure, maybe it's a little unusual for a guy to be championing a winner from a past season of American Idol. You know what? I don't care. I have listened to this song recently, simply on its musical merits and catchy sound, let alone the fact that I was looking for a solid and overlooked cover to write about. Listen to Carey's original version, followed by the cover by Cook. The way they compliment each other shows how the two are derived so much from the artist perspective and intention and not just the gender. Cool stuff.

Natural Change

We should all be thankful for the internet.

There are countless ways it has changed our lives. The one I tend to write most about on this site, it should be noted, is that just about anything you could think of is available. Any movie, art, book, song, game, fetish or conspiracy theory not only has a home, but a thriving community behind it. For better or worse, our collective humanity is available for download, provided you know where to look. So how does this apply to my coverage of covers, beyond simply proselytizing the proliferation of digital distribution?

Michael Jackson's passing was a momentous event, not just for myself but for anyone who heard his music. Due to the sad spiral of his life, many of us only became reacquainted with his music and prolific career after his passing. I wrote about some of my own experiences here. When his memorial was broadcast on TV a short time later, millions tuned in to mourn or just observe the spectacle. While there were a multitude of notable events, one in particular stood out to me - an event that, within minutes of it happening, I was able to track down both as an mp3 and a YouTube video. 

John Mayer's instrumental cover of Jackson's 1983 single 'Human Nature' was no big reinvention of the pop staple. There was no crazy twist or novel concept. It was just a straight forward, earnest performance of a fantastic song. Jackson's song was surprisingly no-frills as it was, considering his elaborate and meticulous performances and arrangements. The beauty in Mayer's performance is his distillation of the song into a single instrument. Most of the cover is him, solo, on his electric guitar. His playing is subtle and nuanced, a display of restraint and artistry. The lack of insane, face-melting solos is at the heart of why the song is so great when distilled to its core. To cite the old adage, it's the notes he's not playing that make it great.

Jackson is someone whose art I've appreciated to a deeper extent as I've grown older, finding pop gold over and over throughout his extensive discography. Mayer is an artist I've surprised myself by really becoming a fan of as I've gotten older, after realizing his label stuck him in a convenient package right out of the gate. He was more than just the tween-to-college girl fish-in-a-barrel guitar slinger - he's an unrivaled guitarist and a unique voice in a sea of mediocrity. This cover reminds me to appreciate both of them for what they are and to look beyond my assumptions when evaluating a song. Listen to them both, they're stellar pop songs. They just happen to be flip sides to the same coin. Both can be found on your local internet.

Games Galore

Covers, man.


They're everywhere, for better or worse. You find them in the most unexpected places. When I was in college, my best friend (not the one I married, the dude one) turned me on to the Finnish metal band HIM. Being enamored with all things mischievous and vibrant at the time, I was hooked. The dynamic overtures of the heavy, romantic music fit right into the pocket my mind had waiting for it. Ville Valo and his band of tattooed dilettantes were making exactly the kind of over the top music I wanted to back the time I spent sulking at a bar in the local party house. It wasn't my most shining, social time, but at least the two of us had control over the tunes when a house party would break out on a frigid February night. We exposed a lot of our peers, en masse, to the glories of the overly dramatic love metal.

 Imagine my surprise, then, when something cut through the clamor and din of a typical collegiate bacchanalia. I was well into my desired beverage of choice for the evening when I cocked my ear to catch the tune over the noise of 20-somethings trying to hook up. I knew this song. Not from HIM, but from somewhere else. It was their perfectly suited version of Chris Isaak's 'Wicked Game'. I distinctly recall breaking into peals of laughter at the dawning insight into the soundtrack, assuredly looking quite insane to anyone observing from an objective standpoint. One minute - deeply engaged in a drinking contest. The next - howling to myself in the corner, asking Sam to turn up the music. I must have looked like I had suffered a stroke. Par for the course at the basement bar in college.

Chris Isaak had created a strange thing in his song 'Wicked Game'. It was on heavy rotation for awhile on VH1 when I was younger. I remember him rolling around on a beach with a model, all filmed in black and white. The song was a sultry, sexy number that was completely beyond my understanding of the world at the time. I remember thinking it must make sense when I grew older. Turns out it would. His crooning number, softly strummed and played with passion, was aiming for something beyond my audience. HIM would see to all that.

The Finnish metal band, hot on the word of mouth from prankster Bam Margera, was quickly making a name for themselves in America. Their album Razorblade Romance, released in 1999 (or 2000, depending on legalities) was a phenomenal example of intentionally overly-dramatic Gothic metal with romantic tinges. To a drinker and a writer with a soft spot for hard music, I was hooked. Their cover of 'Wicked Game' was a natural fit. They hit the same core structures of the song while adding their own little touches or personality to it, in a way making it their own. I honestly think of it in terms of HIM as much as I would Chris Isaak. They put weight and menace behind what was otherwise an ethereal and intangible song. Isaak was distant yet close, HIM were heavy yet aloof. 

These differing versions of Wicked Game show just how both artists versions of the song can hold equal validity in my eyes. They both have their own legitimate versions, each strong and independent of the other despite the linked essence in the center. Give a listen and see which one makes more sense to you.

Rock Over

No preamble here, kids.


It's cover week. I should have recognized the signs when I was writing yesterday, but I was too focused on getting to bed. I wasn't just seeking a lullaby, I was looking for the comfort of music you recognize, but packaged in a new and novel manner. That's what I love about some of the more inspired covers I hear - it's one thing to do a paint-by-numbers deal and just trace around the pre-established lines. It's something else entirely to reinvent a song, to take what has been created and re-interpret it in a way that twists and contorts it into something new. I think it can take just as much originality as writing the song in the first place.

Take, for example, 'Rock On' by David Essex. That is, in and of itself, a great glam song from the 70s. It's a weird, slinky little thing that weasels a bass line into a core component of the song. It was the definition of heavy. The off-kilter rhythm and the iconic melody are recognizable and grabbing, even today. You hear the song and know immediately that it's great if a bit distant. One of those songs that comes on the radio at random and you wonder why it hasn't sneaked into more of your playlists like it did into your subconscious. 

When I was in high school I caught the Smashing Pumpkins on their last major tour before the end of their first epoch. They were on the tour supporting Machina, which was divisive to say the least. They put on a memorable show at the Northrop Auditorium, I'm pretty sure, but the fact that they were playing a smaller venue than the stadiums they used to pack certainly conveys all you need to know about where their fans had gone. Anyway, during their set full of hits and new tracks came a song I couldn't quite place, but knew it sounded familiar. When James Iha's guitar began screaming the melody to the David Essex rocker, I had an 'aha!' moment. The Pumpkins had taken the song and turned it into an even heavier, angstier arena anthem. Basically they turned it into a Pumpkins song. Corgan's angry buzz of a voice, when added to the already phenomenal mix of Iha, bassist Melissa Auf der Mauer's excellent support and the astounding drums of Jimmy Chamberlain, was a knock out. Take a listen here.


This is a cover that always springs to mind when I think of what makes a good reinterpretation. If you hadn't known it wasn't theirs, you would just as easily assume it was a live standard they did that hadn't been put on record. I'm gonna dig up some of my other favorite covers in the coming week. Let me know if you've got a good example - I'd love to hear it.