Costume Songs

Some quick housekeeping before we get started: the below blog includes a song by They Are Gutting a Body of Water, whose mastermind Doug Dulgarian was recently diagnosed with cancer. TAGABOW has been a favorite band of mine for many years and I've been lucky enough to see them many times, most recently in a parking lot across the street from Honey's back in August.

They had opened for Thurson Moore and Dinosaur Jr. earlier that afternoon, a show that was set for the Maria Hernandez skate park and was a near lock to be instantly legendary. Because we live in the timeline where we can't have nice shoegaze-related things, the show was moved to TV Eye for "safety" purposes. But the TAGABOW faithful had been promised a free outdoor show, so the band moved heaven and earth to deliver. They parked two U-Haul vans butt to butt, set up a makeshift stage, and ripped it in the subtropical heat. Dulgarian took the mic at the close of the 40 minute show, after spending the day gigging with some of the most legendary guitar noisemakers to ever live, to tell the gathered fans that, "This is why we do it and what it's all about."

I'm linking to the Gofundme set up by TAGABOW's management below. I spend a lot of time ranting at friends and acquaintances about the way streaming (and especially Spotify) have destroyed the chances of all but the biggest bands making a decent living off their art, and am sometimes asked variations of, "well how can I meaningfully support independent music as one person?" I mean it when I say: throwing a spare few bucks at the link below is surefire a method as any. TAGABOW throws the kind of shows that inspire kids to get involved in their local scenes, and Dulgarian's label Julia's War has platformed a truly stupid number of amazing bands. These are people who are giving their entire lives to making shit for us to listen to, and right now it's our job to show some love back. Fuck cancer forever.

I'm back from another little jaunt, this time to Atlanta, where I visited some old friends and got to spend time with their kids. We took them to "Boo at the Zoo," a Halloween themed day at, well, the zoo. I reprised my classic Bruce Springsteen costume, so chosen because I already own a lot of denim and red flannel. Tonight I will attend a party dressed as Lloyd Dobler, so chosen because I already own a coat like the one he wears. Sometimes you just need to make it easy for yourself.

Cover songs are an appropriate choice for a Halloween playlist because *affecting a very stoned demeanor* "cover songs are kinda like the costumes of songs if you think about it, man." It's a chance for artists to embody, to tweak, to reinvent. A good cover reveals an influence, or lets a writer step outside their mode entirely into another one. A great cover teaches you something about the song that you may not have understood previously. Sometimes covers are as simple as "louder and slower," or maybe "louder and faster." Sometimes they are quieter. Sometimes they bear only the most passing relation to the original.

In terms of what's on offer here? I shot for a solid variety but I am a slave to my impulses. There are a lot of shoegaze covers because I think that kind of thing is cool. The Beatles make a few appearances on this list; Bruce shows up more than once. I tried to shy away from covers that occurred in live-show settings and err on the side of more official recordings (provided, of course, that they do not appear on the main streaming services). These aren't really ordered the way prior playlists have been, but they aren't not in order if that makes sense.

Isaac Hayes - "Let's Go Out Tonight" [The Blue Nile]

Here's an easy one: pretty cool that this exists! Mostly about the differences in Hayes's and Paul Buchanan's voices and how that affects the character of the song. The latter's original was mysterious yet pleading, whereas Hayes's gravelly rendition is eerie and far more seductive. Isaac Hayes was so fucking cool.

My Bloody Valentine - "Map Ref. 41N 93W" [Wire]

Trades out the herky-jerk of the original for jet engine propulsion. Unfortunately never quite rivals the sheer thrill of hearing the chorus in the Wire version (one of the great rock and roll moments of all time, in my opinion) but MBV teases out something pretty sweet here.

Cigarette Camp - "The Ballad of Danbert Nobacon" [Green Day]

Had never heard the original Green Day song before and had one hell of a time trying to find it. Long live the 30 second punk song.

Narrow Head - "Gold Star for Robot Boy" [Guided by Voices]

Narrow Head - "Speed Trials" [Elliott Smith]

Fuck it two Narrow Head covers. I had the GBV one queued up forever for this mix and the heard the Elliott Smith rendition and thought, "honestly they did something more interesting here." But I love these both, they're exactly what I want out of a cover sometimes: just make it rip.

Gull - "Halo" [Beyoncé]

Alright now let's have a little fun with it. I found out about this guy because he played with Fiasco once or twice, he does a kind of one-man-Lightning-Bolt riff. Generally I don't love music that must be "seen" to be "good" (ie I'm not sure this would be remarkable if you didn't watch him do it) but this in particular is such a wild swing, I end up loving it.

They Are Gutting a Body of Water - "Julia" [The Beatles]

Our first entry by The Fab Four. Doug from TAGABOW slows this one down to a drugged out crawl and finds a psychedelic pocket in John's plaintive lament. It feels extremely Philly-scene-coded. Recommended videos led me to a spectral Jeff Buckley cover of this tune as well.

D'Angelo - "Black Hole Sun" [Soundgarden]

We're cooking with gas now.* I remember when YouTube served this up to me, shortly after D'Angelo's passing, I thought of three friends who sat squarely in the middle of this Venn diagram and immediately sent the video to each of them. Went 3/3 on getting back an "oh shit, this is sick." In truth this is not even really a cover, he just invents a whole new song using Soundgarden's chorus as a jumping off point. So this is gonna kick off our "getting abstract with it" portion of the list.

*My best friend tends to bastardize this one as "cooking with grease," which is obviously incorrect, except I've heard him say it wrong so many times that now I doubt my own ability to remember which is right. The only other person I've ever heard make the same mistake is Ciara Miller on an episode of Summer House.

Jim O'Rourke - "Fast Car" [Tracy Chapman]

I realize I keep putting the original artist in brackets as if these aren't all extremely famous and recognizable songs being covered. Oh well. This one bubbles up on Twitter every so often among a certain kind of cognoscenti but it really is that good. The way they recapture the head of the tune after descending into loping strings and fuzz for twenty-odd minutes is spellbinding. This is a great reminder to myself to wander around forlornly to this in the next couple of weeks.

Dick Slessig Combo "Wichita Lineman" [Glen Campbell]

Another one from the "Real Heads and Zoners" set. Classic country music is a pretty big blind spot for me, so I haven't spent much time listening to the original "Wichita Lineman" and I mostly receive this version as a really blissful head trip with a familiar sounding name.

Couch Slut - "Babylon Sisters" [Steely Dan]

I'm flipping the script here as we drift back into the land of "covers that approach recognition." Couch Slut and Steely Dan may seem like a strange match, but they do approach similar subject matter from different perspectives and emotional registers. Blows MJ Lenderman slowing down "Dancing in the Club" out of the water, that's for damn sure.

Georgia & Hugh Maq - "Androgynous" [The Replacements]

I found this watching Camp Cope videos on YouTube way before I'd ever really listened to the Mats** and revisited it for many years before I looked up the original. It's a beautiful and intimate rendition, and Hugh's leads (in the chorus especially) are so smooth and unobtrusive. If I think about this video in the context of Camp Cope's second album closer "I've Got You" I will start to sob uncontrollably.

**When I was in Minneapolis, I visited the Replacements House (turns out it was two blocks from where my friend lived). The second floor window, where the Let It Be cover was shot, has a stained glass depiction of the lads sitting on the roof.

Asylum Party - "Ticket to Ride" [The Beatles]

Shoutout to Mark Baldwin from Lovecup for putting me on to this French post punk band. The guitar tone they get on that main riff is delectable, and I'm quite charmed when their accents peek through at various points.

Olive Drab - "I Don't Care" [Icona Pop]

A true relic in danger of being lost in the great erasure of 2010s online ephemera. My friend played me this in college and we were both obsessed, but years later I had trouble tracking it down. It was part of a Birdtapes comp of Top 40 songs so here's a bonus disc of other crazy covers you can check out. I've never actually listened to the rest of this tape but the tracklist looks crazy so I'll probably do that soon.

Anne - "Atlantic City" [Bruce Springsteen]

Our first appearance by The Boss. I know very little about this band and their name isn't particularly SEO friendly but it looks like they did a split with Whirr at one point. They also released this on a sequel(?) to the legendary Run For Cover compilation Mixed Signals. I do wish people would cover slightly more off-the-beaten-path Bruce tracks more often (shoutout to Angel Olsen for choosing "Tougher Than the Rest") but ultimately this is great, and I love the whistled lead that keeps cropping up throughout.

Wye Oak - "Dance My Pain Away" [Rod Lee]

Real Baltimore shit. What's cool about this one is that they emphasize the narrative aspect without falling into the trap of getting too dirge-y or sappy. According to the YouTube comments a remix of this cover that threw it back over a "one-two-trip-a-let" club beat ouroboros style was played on an episode of So You Think You Can Dance, which is pretty neat.

Cloakroom - "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" [Nirvana]

Cloakroom - "Never Let Me Down Again" [Depeche Mode]

A no-brainer for double inclusion here: Cloakroom had already bundled these two into a a short EP called Autumnal Equinox Singles. They do a great job of pulling out the commonalities in two songs by two very different sounding bands that are nonetheless enjoyed by a pretty broad swath of the same people.

My Bloody Valentine - "We Have All the Time in the World" [Louis Armstrong]

Ok now I'm feeling bad that I gave some of the other shoegaze bands two covers but limited MBV to one, so I'm rectifying that here. It's pretty light on guitar sounds for a band so famous for guitar sounds, but it is quite a beautiful cover and more bands should pull from classic and/or jazz songwriting when making these kinds of decisions.

Shallowater - "My Sacrifice" [Creed]

In an inverse of the "Black Hole Sun" cover above, my friend Wyatt correctly intuited that I would go nuts for this. I'm breaking my own rules here but this is well shot and the sound is good. Also come on, they stretch this shit out for ten minutes, I am powerless in the face of such chutzpah. I caught Shallowater live back in June and was struck by how much Modest Mouse is in their DNA, something that doesn't come through as heavily on their records. But it's on full display here in the way Tristan Kelly's high basslines wrap around Blake Skipper's guitar and stretched out singing.

The Wrens - "Nightswimming" [R.E.M.]

I'm a true Wrens sicko and actually heard this before the original (I downloaded it as part of a "rarities" style compilation). It's not so radically different from the R.E.M. version but it's choc full of classic Bissell-ian songwriting tics: the way the guitars are stacked so as to imply percussion, the chiming three-note arpeggiated progressions that shift on a dime, the ghostly harmony at the end that fades into a suggestion of a totally different song. It's magic.

Jade Lilitri - "I'm Only Sleeping" [The Beatles]

I'm also an Oso Oso sicko so I'm tossing this very charming rendition in here as well. If I'm being honest the most interesting part of this is that it's credited to Jade as a solo artist rather than Oso Oso (well, that and the tremolo guitar solo), but it's great fun to hear one of our current best tunesmiths tackle arguably the all-time great composer of pop melodies.

Thursday - "Dancing in the Dark" [Bruce Springsteen]

Real New Jersey shit. Thursday pull something really interesting out of this song, it ends up sounding nothing like them nor The Boss's version. I'd say it sits somewhere at the intersection of new wave and glam and mall screamo, I really dig some of the lead tones they get here.

Stephen Malkmus - "Secret Knowledge of Backroads" [Silver Jews]

Breaking the rules again here. This is a bit of a weird one, since Pavement actually released a version of this song on a reissue of Slanted and Enchanted and Malkmus sings on the Silver Jews' version (and potentially also helped write the song). I think the way David Berman's collaborators and friends continue to play his songs out in the world is extremely moving, and I love Malkmus's solo guitar arrangements where he manages to play lead and rhythm simultaneously and/or in alternation. I revisit this video of him playing "Spit on a Stranger" in Paris using an open tuning all the time.

Prince - "Just My Imagination" [The Temptations]

I've been on a big Prince kick since that one tweet went around asking people about the best Prince song but without using any of an aforementioned list of big hits that also managed to not include any of my personal favorites. This whole bootleg of an aftershow in The Netherlands is legendary and I could probably fill an entire entry on just that tape, or even just this song (I might still do that one day). Anyway the guitar solo that starts around the 2:30 mark is on the shortlist for greatest solos ever.

Dennis Brown - "The Long and Winding Road" [The Beatles]

I set out to have a Dub Summer™️ this year and to finally learn to really appreciate reggae and dub beyond just knowing a few famous records. I didn't get all that far but I did hear this really beautiful Beatles cover.

Andrew Jackson Jihad and Jeff Rosenstock mash up 16 Undercover Hits

Ok now let's do a silly one!

Recommendation Corner:

READ:

Stephanie Burt "In Memory of the Rock Band Breaking Circus" - cover songs led me to this tribute to a forgotten indie rock band of yesteryear. The massively underrated Chicago-by-way-of-North Carolina band Seam (Seam-hive rise up) has recorded a handful of great covers including one of a song called "Driving the Dynamite Truck," which has to be one of the coolest song titles ever.

Well I went and listened to the original and, much as it pains me to admit, it blows the Seam version clear out of the water. I think this is one of the best songs I've ever heard and is often how life feels to me (things going medium well, fairly certain it will all blow up soon). Give this a listen and give the poem a read.