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Tunes

100 best covers: #29 Frente! “Bizarre love triangle”

<< #30    |    #28 >>

Thursday night was pub night back in university. It’s why I tried (and was mostly* successful) to avoid Friday morning classes throughout my five years attending York University in Toronto. At some point in the fall of 1995, I switched pub night allegiances from my local college pub**, The Open End, to the main campus pub, The Underground, because it was bigger and the music they played was more to my tastes. DJ Stephen Rigby span a mix of danceable alternative rock and pop from the 70s right up to what was current, running the gamut of ska, punk, goth, shoegaze, industrial, britpop, and everything in-between. I rarely missed a week.

And being a regular, I got to know the other regulars, learned their musical tastes, and what songs would draw them up to the dance floor every time. Some of these I would meet and become friends with over the couple years I frequented The Underground pub. Some of these would become nodding acquaintances, either at the pub or if seen on campus somewhere outside of the pub***. And others still were never properly met but were recognized, given nicknames, and perhaps they even recognized me. An example of the last of these is a trio of young ladies that me and my friends affectionately referred to as ‘the flapper girls’, not because of their retro style of dress****, but for the way they danced. Their tastes ran light and airy and cheery, from folk to dream pop to what I would later learn was Twee, and the song of the day***** was one of those that would draw them out to the middle of the dance floor with their flower wreaths tucked into their braids, their long flowery dresses twirling about them, and their arms fluttering like wings.

Frente’s cover of New Order’s “Bizarre love triangle” is the first track I remember ever hearing by the Australian indie pop group. Released as a b-side to single “Labour of love” in 1994 here in North America, it garnered regular airplay on Toronto’s CFNY (which is where I heard them) and made a name for them here and elsewhere on this continent. I later recorded a copy of their debut album “Marvin” off my friend John. Apparently, they released a second album in 1996 before splitting two years later but I never heard it.

Their cover of “Bizarre love triangle” is great because it is uniquely theirs, taking the original material and converting a new wave, completely electronic, robotic dance anthem to an acoustic folk, organic ray of sunshine. Don’t get me wrong. New Order’s original is a classic and truly untouchable for its originality and ability to get anyone out on the dance floor. Frente stripped the song down to its esentials, keeping it at a mere two minutes, Angie Hart’s soft vocals against fingers plucking on acoustic strings. It’s the type of sound my friend Tim would have called ‘too happy’ but for anyone else, was instantaneously smile invoking.

The cover here can’t possibly be called better than the original. However, it’s just so different and different is also great.

Cover:

Original:

*I say ‘mostly’ because in my final year, one of my required credit courses was a twice a week, where the second class fell at 8:30 on Friday mornings and I only rarely made it to that second class of the week.

**Back in that golden age, every university college had its own pub but I’ve heard that, one by one, they’ve closed over the years, leaving only the main campus pub.

***Kind of like a secret club.

****Though their style was unique as well.

*****Along with another cover by Frente: their rendition of the Flinstones’ “Open up your heart (and let the sunshine in)” from the “Saturday morning” compilation.

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1994: #23 Pop Will Eat Itself “Ich bin ein auslander”

<< #24   |   #22 >>

Much like the last song and post in this series, the song at number twenty-three on this list of my favourite tunes from 1994 came to me care of the very same CMJ New Music Monthly CD sampler issued in December 1994. But unlike Cranes, whose introduction was the song on that CD (and was well met indeed), I was no stranger to Stourbridge, England’s Pop Will Eat Itself.

Indeed, I’ve already regaled a few pieces of my history with the Poppies on these pages. It all started off with my hearing of them from my friend Elliott, who learned of them from his girlfriend Jen, and listening to them one day at his apartment. Then, perhaps a year or two later finding myself on the dance floor late one Saturday night at the now-defunct Moon Room with a strange young lady dancing to “Wise up! Sucker” and learning that the backing vocals were provided by Miles Hunt, frontman of my favourite band at the time, The Wonder Stuff. I had decided at that point that it might be worth my time to search out some of PWEI’s stuff but whenever I found their CDs at the used shops, I always seemed to find something I wanted to buy more.

Hearing “Ich bin ein auslander” on that CMJ sampler, proved to be the missing piece and proverbial straw that opened the floodgates. I got myself a copy of “Dos dedos mis amigos”, the group’s fifth (and what turn out to be their last) studio album, and proceeded to play the hell out of it. It definitely sounded more industrial than the material that I had previously heard by the group, controlled chaos of more sample heavy dance punk. This fifth studio album also sounded more serious as a whole, less infantile and more angry.

“Welcome to a state where the politics of hate shout loud in the crowd
Watch ’em beat us all down
There’s a rising tide on the rivers of blood
But if the answer isn’t violence, neither is your silence”

The title of the opening track on the album is a misspelled german phrase which translates roughly to “I am a foreigner”. It starts with a rhythmic keys line that resembles a siren or an alarm and almost immediately, the raging guitars kick in, just begging you to jump around or thrash your head back and forth, long hair flailing all about. It is an angst driven political indictment of racism, nazism, and England’s immigration laws at the time, rife with killer lines like the ones above, tailor-made for shouting along to with the rest of the crowd on the dance floor with your fist punching the air.

Glorious!

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1994 list, click here.

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Albums

Best film soundtracks: #5 “Sucker punch” (2011)

So much for getting through my top five soundtracks ‘over the next month’!

Honestly, I wanted to get this particular piece posted almost two months ago, not long after I shared the last piece in this series counting down albums ten through six. But then, I got the brilliant idea that I wanted to rewatch all of the films for the top five soundtracks to remind myself of the films and how the music interacted with each. Great idea, yes, but with the Olympics* pretty much killing all my free time for half of February, then, the post-Olympics letdown for a few weeks, and feeling a bit rundown from the busy season at work, the unplanned blogging hiatus, well, I’ve had a hard time getting myself organized.

I finally got around to rewatching “Sucker punch” on the last Friday of February and am kind of glad that I did. ‘Glad’ because I realized I really only had a basic memory of the film’s events and ‘kind of’ because I found myself a little more disappointed with it this time around. As I mentioned back in November, when I posted about one of the tracks below for my 100 best covers list, I actually saw the film for the first time in the theatres with a group of friends from work. And while most of them were familiar with the film’s concept and the filmmaker’s previous work, I had no preconceptions, had no idea what the film was about or what I was getting into beforehand and found myself caught up in the spectacle of it.

The film was co-written and directed by Zack Snyder, who had already cut his teeth remaking zombie classic “Dawn of the dead” (2004) and adapting two comic book series in “300” (2006) and “Watchmen” (2009). In fact, I had always thought “Sucker punch” was also based on a comic book or graphic novel and only found out it was an original concept after rewatching and sitting down to write this post. The visual style and action sequences are very reminiscent of Snyder’s previous two films and in effect, it very much looks like you are watching a moving comic book. The story follows a young woman committed to a mental institution by her ‘wicked stepfather’ after framing her for the murder of her sister and then bribes one of the crooked attendants to get her lobotomized. What follows next is a mixture and layers of fantasy upon fantasy, a mishmash of action genres and epic effects, as Baby doll (our heroine) attempts to both survive and escape the circumstances in which she finds herself.

The soundtrack only adds to the vibe of the film, consisting of mashups and reimaginings of songs that many might find familiar. Each is used to backdrop specific scenes or parts of the movement forward, most obviously for the scenes in which Baby doll is ‘dancing’ her way through each step of her mission. And that vague song familiarity adds to the dreamlike quality of the film and the blending and questioning of reality.

It’s a brilliantly orchestrated soundtrack that works just as well as without the film, given that it’s a total mood piece, and can be listened to all the way through as such. If you haven’t seen the film or heard the soundtrack, my three picks for you will give you good taste what you may or may not be missing.

“Sweet dreams (are made of this)” Emily Browning: The opening track on the soundtrack is also the first song we hear in the film. It provides the backing and movement and emotional drive for the opening scenes in which the stage is set. Playing like a flashback or a ‘previously on’ montage, the sinister and haunting music delivers the protagonist from her childhood home to a mental institution with no prospect of happiness or safe return. Interestingly, this cover of the Eurythmics classic is sung by the actress playing said main character (Emily Browning sings on two other tracks on the soundtrack as well). It is orchestral rock with an industrial beat and Browning delivers Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart’s lyrics in a lounge/triphop style. And if you listen really closely you can pick out pieces of songs and themes that appear in elsewhere on the soundtrack, a sort of foreshadowing of sorts.

“White rabbit” Emilíana Torinni: Icelandic singer/songwriter Emilíana Torrini’s cover of the Jefferson Airplane psych classic underpins one of the aforementioned ‘dance’ sequences. During our heroines’ plot to steal the map of the hospital, Baby Doll’s dance morphs into a World War I action movie adventure. The song’s choice for the film works perfectly with its themes of fantasy and dreams and reality. And Torrini’s eerie and bold vocals stand up brilliantly to those of Grace Slick’s original. The music is a dreamy pastiche, nodding to 60s sci-fi soundtrack sound effects, indian folk music, symphonic rock, and more of that industrial angst. It is explosive and full of verve.

“Where is my mind” Yoav feat. Emily Browning: Another of Emily Browning’s songs on this soundtrack also features Israel-Romanian singer/songwriter Yoav in a duet covering the early Pixies track. It appears at two pivotal points in the film, a bookend of sorts, first, as Baby Doll is checked into the hospital, and later, as she and Sweet Pea are attempting to escape. As I hinted above, this track has already received the ‘My life in music list’ treatment back in October and I wrote back then that it almost felt to me like this is the song that really spearheads the soundtrack. “It builds from a place of quiet, an almost forgotten corner of the mind, each singer adding distinct voices from distinct experiences, and then the guitars kick in and the beat picks up, everything continuing to build until the machine guns fire, the full orchestra finale, and fireworks galore.”

*I’ve been an Olympics junkie since a pre-teen. I eat, sleep, and breathe practically nothing else while they are happening, watching any event being broadcast, which is how I got hooked on curling a few Olympics ago.

We’ll be back soon(ish) with album #4. In the meantime, here are the previous albums in this list:

10. “Marie Antoinette” (2006)
9. “Clueless” (1995)
8. “Fear & loathing in Las Vegas” (1998)
7. “Vanilla sky” (2001)
6. “(500) days of summer” (2009)

You can also check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.