Ruston Kelly is a singer-songwriter who creates Americana, pop-rock, and alt-country tunes- but he recently traded his twang for a much rounder vocal timbre in this version of Samia’s song “Dream Song.”
The original version of “Dream Song” is like a dark lullaby, with macabre lyrics such as “tripping over spanish moss again, today is all of it, there are six minutes of brain activity, after the body’s dead.” Kelly kept the same emotive quality of the song in his version but changed the instrumentation and momentum slightly.
Whereas Samia’s “Dream Song” had more running eight-notes in the beginning (and hence more movement), Ruston Kelly’s is more of a slow burn with his mellow, aqueous synths and indie-fuzzed-out vocals. As the plaintive piano enters, the song builds. Ruston Kelly’s smooth transition into his falsetto/head voice utterly romances listeners. We get a taste of picked strings at the end of this version right up until the last line “She gets her dreams for free…” fades out into oblivion.
In the post on Instagram which announced the release of the cover the artist remarked: “I could write a trilogy about her albums but it would be a complete [Lord Of The Rings] plagiarism so I’ll save that for a psychedelic concept record.”
