Parquet Courts have a new album on the way this year, but the band’s Andrew Savage has been keeping plenty occupied with his own solo material. He released a full-length solo album last fall and recently wrapped up a solo tour, where he performed covers from the Cranberries and the Fall. We’ve heard his version of “Linger” and today he’s sharing his take on “Frightened” from the late Mark E. Smith. .
Power trio Screaming Females are just ahead of their new album, All At Once, but today they’ve got something else to offer: their contribution to Amazon Music’s Valentine surprisingly fruitful series of original playlists.
For Valentine’s Day, Amazon is updating its twin “Love Me” and “Love Me Not” playlists. We’ve recently heard contributions to “Love Me” from Jay Som and Common Holly plus of Montreal’s entry into “Love Me Not.” For the latter, Screaming Females reimagined “No More I Love You’s,” originally recorded by the LoverSpeaks and popularized by Annie Lennox. Their cover is a raw, lo-fi rock rendition of the theatrical pop song, bolstered by Marissa Paternoster’s impassioned vocals a fitting substitute for Lennox’s signature croon.
To celebrate his birthday, Dustin Payseur of Beach Fossils released a cover of Yung Lean’s “Agony,” and shot an impromptu video while “walking around in a haze,” as he phrases on Twitter, early this morning. The group transforms Lean’s version, adding layered instruments to the otherwise naked track. Payseur’s swoony arrangement basically transforms “Agony” into a really good Beach Fossils song and, oh no, suddenly we have all these feelings.
“Agony” originally appears on Yung Lean’s Stranger, with Lean stretching his voice over somber piano keys, conjuring up Beauty and the Beastimagery of dancing with candlesticks. For a group with roots the DIY scene, the cover might seem kind of weird on its face, but Payseur and his pals have always been voracious listeners. In addition to his robust collection of 80s UK hardcore, he and the band spent a fair amount of time around the release of their last album Somersault talking about how its patchwork construction was inspired by 90s rap and its production’s sample collagework. Also, for what its worth, sometime in the months since the release of Somersault they’ve apparently become friends with Post Malone after repeatedly @-ing him on twitter
we love the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and we love this song. here’s our cover of “Soft Shock!” , this California punk rock band is more than force to be reckoned with. Frontwoman, Lydia Night, is everything you want in a lead singer: talented, dedicated and charismatic. It’s hard to imagine her and her über talented band anywhere but on a stage, playing their hearts out. Take the Spice Girls, the Ramones, and Bikini Kill and put them all in a blender. Take a sip of that mix and enjoy all that The Regrettes have to offer.
Ahead of UK live dates starting later this month, Portland’s Moon Duo are back with a new limited edition 12″, featuring covers of classic songs by Alan Vega of Suicide and The Stooges. Their new take on Vega’s ‘Jukebox Babe’ is streaming now, and the 12″, which also features The Stooges’ ‘No Fun’, is due for release on January 19th via Sacred Bones.
The covers were conceived during the band’s last UK tour, which saw them play their biggest London show yet at a sold out Heaven, in support of two-part opus Occult Architecture: “We started playing ‘No Fun’ after BBC6 Radio asked us to record an Iggy song for his 70th birthday,” the band explained.
“We added it to our set to work it out for the session and kept playing it every night because everyone loves that song. We worked up a version of ‘Jukebox Babe’ because our sound engineer Larry got it stuck in his head and was singing it all the time. We figured, we may as well play it if we’re going to hear it all the time.
“The Stooges and Iggy, and Suicide/Alan Vega/Martin Rev, are all huge influences on us. But we never want to do faithful covers of great songs, because what’s the point. So we tried to push both of the tracks in less obvious directions, incorporating other influences, like California psych and cosmic disco, giving them more of a summer vibe. We knew Sonic Boom was working outside of Lisbon, so we asked him to produce the tracks, recording them in August for maximal summer heat.”
Season four of BBC’s Peaky Blinders came to a close last night, and to round out the season, they enlisted LauraMarling to cover Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” from 1962’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.Marling’s voice is more soothing than Dylan’s, but still as commanding, as she blends her vocals over rollicking acoustic guitar punctuated with electric strums, building with intensity from start to finish.
The crime drama series previously tapped Jarvis Cocker and Iggy Pop to cover Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand,” the theme of the show, to appear in last week’s episode. listen to Marling’s cover of Dylan’s classic below.
Laura Marling’s cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, recorded especially for the series finale of TV Drama Peaky Blinders.
Turntable Kitchen, a Seattle-based company that has a variety of delightful deals like a subscription that brings a bag of coffee beans and an exclusive 7” single to your door every month. Their most ingenious offer though is the Sounds Delicious series, a club that releases limited edition records featuring a current artist covering a full album from the past. To date, that has included Ben Gibbard performing all of Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque and Yumi Zouma covering the second Oasis album.
More recently, Turntable Kitchen unveiled a version of The Cure’s sophomore studio work Seventeen Seconds, as interpreted by Frankie Rose and pressed onto a gorgeous piece of blood red vinyl. She and producer/co-conspirator Jorge Elbrecht don’t mess with the formula of these songs much, sticking close to the original arrangements even as they throw a little sunlight and modern synth sounds at them. Somehow it doesn’t deter from the creeping dread and downcast glances that Robert Smith and co. exhibited in 1980. The mood is deepened considerably by the surprisingly great pressing of this record. Rose and Elbrecht’s work comes out full and enrapturing, with her tart vocals cleanly cutting through the mix.
Hello, It’s me again. I just got back from my second US tour in as many months. It was such a joy and a dream to travel around North America and sing for new audiences.
The drives were long and as such, so were the playlists. I couldn’t help spinning my favourite songs of the late 60s and early 70s as we drove down the Californian coastline. Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, CSNY, The Beach Boys, Jim Croce to name a few. With such great songs and great sights I knew I wanted to document this experience in some way. So, as we travelled, in motels and dressing rooms I began to record my own versions of the songs that were soundtracking the tour.
My new single ‘Thirteen’ was recorded during those days on tour. It is the second single from my upcoming EP ‘Just A Song Before I Go’ out on the 12th January. You can listen to it below.
The Live Version of ‘Just A Song Before I Go’, I just love this song. It’s an effortlessly good driving song, perhaps owing to the fact that Graham Nash wrote it whilst in a taxi to the airport after his driver bet him he couldn’t write a song during the 15 minute drive.
Kelli Schaefer cover of The Lollipop Shoppe “Mr Madison Ave” . The Lollipop Shoppe was an American garage rock band formed in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1966. The band’s actual recordings, including the 1968 album Just Colour, are in actuality a mix of garage rock and psychedelia. The album and its single, “You Must Be a Witch” – later included on the compilation album Pebbles, Volume 8 – are regarded as garage rock classics for its hard-edge musical stance, and is still prized by record collectors, though neither made the charts. Two of The Lollipop Shoppe’s songs appeared in the movie, Angels from Hell.
Rostam recently appeared on SiriusXMU to perform a stripped-down set of songs from his September solo debut Half-Light, and along with those tracks, he also paid homage to Bob Dylan by covering his classic “Like A Rolling Stone,” in which the song recently celebrated its 52nd birthday.
Rostam gives the folky anthem the baroque indie-pop treatment, slowing down the tempo and transforming the lyrical ramblings into an elegant tune. Equipped with only a piano, he polishes up the song, replacing Dylan’s coarse melodic chants with his soft and tender crooning.
Listen to the cover below, and underneath, find the original 1965 version. Rostam is gearing up to embark on a North American tour at the beginning of next year, maybe some UK dates will follow
Rostam (Rostam Batmanglij) covers the Bob Dylan classic, Like A Rolling Stone, for SiriusXMU
The Fat Angel Sings 