Tag: Soundtrack

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Best tunes of 2020: #17 Ezra Furman “Every feeling”

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I recently wrapped up watching the final season of Sex Education on Netflix and almost immediately, I found myself wanting to start over and rewatch it from the beginning. To me, that’s a sign of a great show and when it happens with books, it’s the same – the feeling of missing the characters and their stories and their worlds.

I wasn’t immediately sure when I started watching the first season back in the fall of 2019. It felt a bit weird to be watching a show that explicitly detailed the sex lives of teenagers, even though I knew that all of the actors would be of the age of consent. It did a great job, though, playing with reality, making the stories not about their age or the place and time*, and more about the great characters and how they reacted to universal problems and situations related to love and relationships and yes, sex.

The show lasted four seasons of eight episodes a piece, which seems quite long for British television in my own limited experience. Each episode in each season was quite excellent and of course, I loved the music throughout, a pastiche of hip music from the 70s to the present, with many songs that I recognized and some that I didn’t. A quick google search explained that many of those excellent songs I didn’t recognize were supplied by American singer-songwriter Ezra Furman.

In late January 2020, about a week after season 2 appeared on Netlix, Furman released “Sex education original soundtrack”, which collected together all of her songs that appeared in the first two seasons of the show. Of course, I made sure to peruse it and then found myself perusing more of her work and it was then, that I realized that though some of the tracks were written for the show, many were songs that were repurposed from her previous recordings.

One of the tracks that Furman wrote new for the show appeared at the end of episode three of the first season. “Every feeling” fits the mood of scene perfectly: the wind-down of an emotionally draining day. At the time, the song wasn’t available anywhere and viewers  immediately started clamouring to find out where they could get a copy. It’s a short piece that focuses on Furman banging away at her acoustic guitar like it was cause of her hurt and depression and her drained voice shaking out all the f-bombs. Because sometimes that’s the only word that’ll do to get your message across.

“I’m gonna feel every feeling
And only love
Only love will remain”

It’s a track full of pain but it’s also damned uplifting.

*Though there were plenty of homages to John Hughes’ teen comedies of the eighties, the hints to past and present technologies and trends made it feel out of time completely.

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

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100 best covers: #48 Sleeper “Atomic”

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“Trainspotting” was a film based on a book of the same name by Irvine Welsh and it was released too much critical acclaim and commercial success at the height of Cool Britannia in 1996. I remember going to see it in the theatres with my friend Tim, when it finally crossed the ocean into the North American market and I absolutely loved it. I later followed many of the actors that made up its young cast as they took full advantage of the film as a stepping stone and went on to great successful careers of their own. I had a copy of the film poster on my residence room wall, duly purchased that year at one of the campus Imaginus fairs, and read the Welsh novel during my next break in studies. And yes, you guessed it, I went out and procured a copy of the film’s soundtrack on CD.

Considered by many* to be one of the best film soundtracks ever, it combines classic alternative tunes from Brian Eno, Lou Reed, New Order, and of course, Iggy Pop, with more contemporary music of the day, which of course meant a smattering Britpop and Techno/Electronica. The mix works surprisingly as well as an album listen as it did match the feel and flow of the film. It ignited a resurgence in popularity for Iggy Pop’s “Lust for life” and made Underworld a household name on dance floors all around the world.

Four tracks in on the soundtrack is this cover of the Blondie track “Atomic”, done by a perhaps lesser-known** Britpop act named Sleeper . Unless I am mistaken, this was the very song that was playing during the scene in which Ewan McGregor’s character, Renton is at a club with his friends and he first catches sight of Kelly Macdonald’s character, Diane***. I won’t go any further lest I ruin part of the story for any of you yet to see the film but I will say that this song was seared into me and became one that I would play over and over again.

I had actually gotten into the band already with their debut album, “Smart”, released the previous year, and with “Atomic” fitting right in with their sound, I didn’t immediately realize it was a cover. When I did and tracked down the Blondie original****, I was somewhat tickled at how faithful a cover it was. It was as if the filmmakers wanted to include the original but somehow couldn’t get the rights and found some other band to replicate it almost to a tee. Admittedly, Louise Wener is not Debbie Harry, nowhere near comparable in the vocal category, but otherwise, I’d have a hell of a time telling the music apart.

Blondie fans might call this one sacrilege but I’d call this comparison even and given my fondness for Britpop, I might even give the Sleeper version the edge.

Cover:

The original:

*Or maybe just me.

**Although at the time, they were quite well-known, scoring a good number of hit UK singles.

***I also had taped to that same residence wall a picture torn from a Select magazine of Sleeper front woman Louise Wener dressed and mimicking the likeness of Diane from the Trainspotting promo shots.

****One of its many versions.

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

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100 best covers: #58 Sarah McLachlan “Blackbird”

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Way back at number 90 on this list, I wrote about Rufus Wainwright’s cover of “Across the universe” for the soundtrack of the Sean Penn film, “I am Sam”. Now, more than thirty songs later on this 100 best covers list, we have another Canadian artist covering another Beatles track off the very same soundtrack.

The music for “I am Sam” was supposed to reflect the title character’s love for Beatles music, a sort of crutch for an intellectually disabled man fighting for custody of a daughter, named, get this, Lucy. The original Beatles songs were chosen while filming was taking place so when the filmmakers were refused the rights to those originals, covers were commissioned that had to retain the same track length and time signatures.

The Paul McCartney penned “Blackbird”, a gentle acoustic piece about US racial tensions off The white album, was assigned to Canadian singer/writer, Sarah McLachlan. It was recorded right in the middle of a six year break between her very successful 1997 record “Surfacing” and the 2003 ‘comeback’ album, “Afterglow”. I honestly don’t know how well McLachlan does outside of Canada but here at home, she is pretty legendary. And why not? That voice of hers is golden. She made a career out being a solo, folk-influenced female artist in a time when male-dominated grunge was king. She started the Lilith fair touring festival in 1996, a card that prominently featured female solo artists or female-led bands and was so successful that two more annual editions followed. I’ve never been a huge fan of her myself, but you can’t argue with her talent and her success.

Much like the stripped down original, Sarah McLahlan’s cover is built upon beautiful finger plucking on the acoustic and yeah, that wonderful voice of hers. It is quite simply a lovely rendition. Do I like it better than the original? No. However, I do find it a shade better than the one done by Doves (who you all know that I love) for the Roswell soundtrack. So yeah, I think that’s saying something.

Cover:

The original:

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