Bobtown Folks Around with Arcade Fire Cover

Posted by Caroline Lees at 12:30 pm No Responses »

Jan 102012

Last winter, New York folk act Bobtown kicked off their “Bobtown Covers Project” with a take on Blue Öyster Cult’s classic “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.” After a long break, they’ve revived the four-part project with a cover of Arcade Fire‘s “My Body Is a Cage.” Their version is the latest in a series of covers of “My Body Is a Cage,” including Peter Gabriel’s standout eerie rendition from two years ago. Continue reading »

Bobtown Folks Up “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper”

Posted by Brent Rydin at 3:00 pm 3 Responses »

Jan 242011

Whether you think it’s about suicide or “eternal love” (as songwriter Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser asserts), there’s no denying that Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” is unnervingly haunting. The latest cover of the song to hit YouTube, by the folk-Americana outfit Bobtown, plays beautifully with the song’s Gothic sensibilities. We asked Bobtown’s Katherine Etzel about the choice. She tells us:

When we first got together, coincidentally, many of our songs were about death. Not a planned theme, but apparently, something we needed to get out of our systems… After noticing and discussing it one day at rehearsal a year or so ago, one of us jokingly launched into a verse of “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” and we realized it actually lent itself nicely to the sort of vocal-heavy arrangements we lean towards. So we built our version of the song around that spontaneous moment.