Singer-songwriter Rosie Thomas has been an underrated, reliable presence in the pages of Cover Me for over a decade. Most recently, she’s been on a kick of some noteworthy, and unexpected, cover picks, like Bjork and Mariah Carey. There’s wry humor in her approach, at least in terms of song choice — taking left-field or especially poppy picks down a peg from the stratosphere, mellowing things out. But the effect has felt consistently authentic and heartfelt, and remains so on her latest cover: a version of The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame.”
When I first encountered Thomas and her music, it was in close collaboration with Sufjan Stevens. The pair have worked together frequently through the years, perhaps most surprisingly around Stevens’s 2010 record, The Age of Adz. That record, one of Stevens’ first moves away from acoustic material, felt like a total glitchy aberration (meant in the best way possible). Thomas’s solo work remains a bit less radical than Adz, but it’s in this liminal sonic space that her cover of “Eternal Flame” resides: part electronic rip in the continuum, part gentle folksy reel. The track, featuring collaborators William Fitzsimmons and Denison Witmer, is featured in an EP series that Thomas is calling Lullabies for Parents. That title feels like the most fitting description possible for what Thomas has made here: dark, heavy and drowsy, supremely dreamy.
Check out more Rosie Thomas covers here.
Check out more covers by The Bangles here.
