Category: Tunes

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100 best covers: #40 Iron And Wine “Such great heights”

<< #41    |    #39 >>

Back in May, I travelled down to Toronto to see a concert for which I had purchased tickets almost six months beforehand. The show in question was certainly worth all the pre-planning and the additional travel: one of the few stops on the tour by Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service celebrating the 20th (er… 21st) anniversary of these bands’ landmark 2003 albums, “Transatlanticism” and “Give up”. It was double duty for Ben Gibbard, frontman of both acts, as he performed two sets on the evening, both feted albums from beginning to end, before coming back to perform a two-song encore, the first song* of which was “Such great heights” (again), which Gibbard introduced as a cover of an Iron And Wine song.

Gibbard was joking, of course, but there was a kernel of truth in there somewhere as well.

When “Such great heights” was launched as the first single from “Give up”, it was released as a four song EP, including covers of two of the album’s songs by two of The Postal Service’s Sub Pop label mates**. The Iron And Wine cover was very nearly as popular as the original, both versions coming to the public’s consciousness at around the same time, and the fact that the pair were very different in sound and style but equally catchy probably helped record sales for both artists. The cover was featured on the “Garden State” soundtrack, a massive vehicle for certain indie artists at that time, and the two versions appeared in multiple TV advertising campaigns.

The Postal Service’s original is a digital beast. The upbeat chiming synths and frenetic rhythm reflect the almost blinding optimism and exuberant subject matter of love and hope, a rarity in Gibbard’s early songwriting. Played back to back, the Iron And Wine cover is still nearly unrecognizable as the same composition. It has a tempo slowed down a hundred million times and is austere in its acoustic guitar finger picking and Sam Beam’s soft and wistful delivery. The production, too, is like a 180, sounding ancient, rather than futuristic, analog versus digital. You can almost hear imagined vinyl crackling overlaying the audible breaths between lines and the tactile feel of the calloused fingertips on the strings.

Both versions are swoon worthy, each a work of beauty in their own right. I couldn’t possibly choose one over the other, unless the mood dictated a certain aesthetic on a given day. Of course, it would be the opposite on the next.

I call this one a draw.

Cover:

Original:

*The second one being an actual cover of Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the silence”!

**The other was The Shins’ cover of “We will become silhouettes”.

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

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Best tunes of 2020: #14 The Beths “I’m not getting excited”

<< #15    |    #13 >>

Just a few days ago I posted about a set I caught at last year’s Ottawa Bluesfest, a set that serves as just one example of what makes the festival so special: the strong possibility for musical discovery in the joy of live music. This next band on my Best tunes of 2020 list was another example of one whom I really fell hard for when I saw them at this very same festival.

The Beths were formed in Auckland, New Zealand in 2014 by four musicians who met at university while studying jazz. They released their debut long player “Future me hates me” in 2018 but I didn’t come across it until the following year, else I might have included it on my list of favourite albums that year. Luckily it didn’t escape other’s notices because all the critical acclaim meant multiple tours and one of these landed them on the 2019 Bluesfest lineup. I don’t remember now if I picked up on them before I saw their name on the website or afterwards, but I definitely earmarked them as a set I really wanted to catch after repeat listens of their power pop harmonies. And of course, I’ve mentioned a few times on these pages how the New Zealand quartet “blew the doors off” the stage and I afterwards stumbled over to the merch tent to pick up a copy of their record.

So for me, “Jump rope gazers” was a highly anticipated release in early 2020, after having played the hell out of the debut record for the rest of 2019. Unfortunately, the sophomore record wasn’t quite as immediately attention grabbing as I was expecting and instead was one that had to grow on me, working hard to earn its place on my end of the year list. Track one on the album was an exception to this, a real standout for this writer, right from the first spin.

“I’m not getting excited
‘Cause my fight and my flight are divided
And so I don’t enthuse
Keep my grip on joy loose
And I wait for the news
With my feet in my shoes”

At first glance, the music doesn’t match the song title. The revving guitars, insistent drum beat, and Elizabeth Stokes’ breathless delivery is all very exciting and feverish and energetic. However, when you consider its almost like an updated and more self aware take on Green Day’s “Basket case”, albeit with a different set of neuroses, the anxious tone reveals itself, as does the pervading take on The Jonah Complex. “I’m not getting excited” is so good and so relatable.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.

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Tunes

100 best covers: #41 The Lemonheads “Mrs. Robinson”

<< #42    |    #40 >>

By all accounts, the Lemonheads’ frontman and driving force, Evan Dando, hated the original version of the song “Mrs. Robinson”, almost as much as he disliked its author. You got the feeling he was heavily leaned on by the ‘powers that be’ to record the cover to go along with the 25th anniversary release of “The Graduate” on home video cassette. He must’ve really blown a gasket when it was tacked on to the end of the track listing on later rereleases of his band’s now classic 1992 album, “It’s a shame about Ray”.

So it’s amusing that this was likely many listeners gateway to the band. It certainly was mine. I distinctly remember recording the video during one of my Friday night CityLimits viewing sessions and falling for the update of a song I knew from my parents’ oldie radio station listening in the car. From there, I recorded the video for the aforementioned album’s title track based on name recognition and of course, I’ve already told the story on these pages on how showing these two videos to my aunt landed me a copy of the CD for Christmas. So yeah, I’ve got a history with the song.

I later developed an appreciation for NYC-based folk rock duo, Simon & Garfunkel who wrote and performed the original. Parts of it were written before the filming of “The graduate”, were shared with its filmmaker, and these appeared in the final film cut. Versions of these snippets appeared on the soundtrack but the actual full-fledged song wasn’t released until a year later as a single and appeared on the band’s fourth album, “Bookends”.

The Lemonheads’ cover has got raunchier guitars than the original acoustic finger picking and instead of the lilting harmonizing on the iconic do-de-do-do-do-do-do intro, it is Evan Dando’s solo, half hearted mimicry. Theirs is about twenty seconds shorter than the orginal but that’s probably more due to its sped up pacing. Indeed, the song is all there but the tone is very different. It rocks and rolls more and yet, it has been often criticized for being a lazy cover. And that may be so, but I couldn’t help myself but to fall hard for it, and that love hasn’t waned in the least in the 30+ years since its release.

(If you hadn’t guessed, I prefer the cover to the original here.)

Cover:

Original:

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