“I mean, you can imagine that if everything had gone great between us, we would have had disaster. I would have written just happy songs – and I tried it in the early ’90s and it didn’t work. The public didn’t like it.” -Bruce Springsteen, discussing his tumultuous relationship with his father.
As Springsteen notes, music fans eye perpetual cheer with skepticism. All pep and no grit will turn off jaded music fans faster than Auto-Tune. The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library (no comment on the band name) faced this problem on their new album Volume One and came up with a smart solution: cover Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It doesn’t get less happy than Nick Cave!
“I was very concerned that people might listen to the album as a whole and kind of categorize it as innocuous folk without really giving a good listen to some of the lyrics and ideas in the songs,” Epstein told Green Light Go Publicity. “So, I wanted to select a cover of a song that had a little darkness in it.”
His choice: “The Weeping Song,” a tune about as cheery as the title implies. Epstein plays with the gender dynamics of the father-son ballad by singing it with bandmate Tanya Palit. With handclaps and gothic orchestration, it’s a must-listen for the next time you too want to dive into the darkness.
MP3: The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library – The Weeping Song (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds cover)
[audio: News0511/23TheWeepingSong.mp3]
Check out more Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library at their website or Facebook.
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