Quickies rounds up new can’t-miss covers. Download ’em below.
• Any Nirvana cover that abandons electric guitar earns immediate brownie points. Any Nirvana cover that replaces it with violin, accordion, and musical saw gets a full-on gold star. Horse Feathers’ “Drain You” may be the best Nirvana cover to come out of 2010. Given that 274 “Smells Like Teen Spirit”s drop every week, that’s saying something. (via PopMatters)
MP3: Horse Feathers – Drain You (Nirvana cover)
• Édith Piaf was a French singer in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Renowned for her heartbreaking torch songs, she became such a cultural icon that in 2007 Olivier Dahan produced La Vie En Rose, a biopic that earned Marion Cotillard an Oscar for her portrayal of the subject. Musician Anna Calvi, on the other hand, wouldn’t earn any awards for imitating Piaf. Her rendition of Piaf’s “Jezebel” (itself a cover, of a song first sung by Frankie Laine) stomps and rages in a way that would have been unheard of in 1951.
MP3: Anna Calvi – Jezebel (Wayne Shanklin / Édith Piaf cover)
• When Australian all-guy trio The Beautiful Girls hit Triple J radio last week, lead singer Mat McHugh expressed his love for Olivia Newton-John before performing a pensive “Hopelessly Devoted to You.” “Olivia Newton-John was incredibly formative in my musical life,” he proclaimed. The radio banter even touches on Grease 2, which McHugh says “shouldn’t be talked of in the same sentence [as the first].”
MP3: The Beautiful Girls – Hopelessly Devoted to You (Grease cover)
• Calling all Farfisa fans: If you like that tiny, tinny organ, you’ll love this Apples in Stereo cover. “Benefits of Lying (with Your Friend)” may be ostensibly an ode to sleeping around, but in true indie fashion it soon reveals a terror of being alone. Bad Veins’ cover first hit vinyl a few months back, but for the first time it’s available to download.
MP3: Bad Veins – Benefits of Lying (with Your Friend) (Apples in Stereo cover)
• Last month we heard a cover of “Futile Devices,” a song off Sufjan Stevens’ new The Age of Adz. Today’s Sufjan cover looks back a little farther, to 2003’s Michigan. Sarah McIntosh, aka. The Good Natured, stacks harmonies towards the heavens on this ethereal soundscape. Sufjan would approve. (via The Recommender)
MP3: The Good Natured – For The Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti (Sufjan Stevens cover)
