“I’m Like a Bird,” Nelly Furtado‘s breakout single from her debut album, was actually a bigger hit in the US than in her home country of Canada, but it made a big enough of an impression that fellow Canadians Good Kid, from the other side of the country, chose to cover “I’m Like a Bird” for The Juno Sessions, a series of Canadian bands covering Juno-winning hits from previous years. Good Kid are an indie rock band from Toronto who have been putting out music for a decade but who were just kids when “I’m Like a Bird” first came out.
Their version begins not with the mellotron of the original but rather with guitar that sounds like The Strokes. Lead vocalist Nick Frosst has a much less laconic voice than some indie rock singers, but he still very much sings the verse very much like an indie rock singer.
For the chorus, there are echoes of a peppier, brighter Television in the guitars, or perhaps more accurately Television-influenced New York guitar bands. At the beginning of the bridge there is a very indie rock guitar solo, before Frosst resumes the lyrics. For the first verse after the bridge it’s mostly just Frosst with and the bass, before the whole band resumes.
The whole thing is not only very indie rock, but very New York indie rock. It’s a fun take: “I’m Like a Bird” as if it had emerged from some men in New York in 2000 instead of a woman of Portuguese descent in Vancouver in 200.
