The fourth single from R.E.M.’s ninth album Monster, “Strange Currencies,” is a little bit “Everybody Hurts 2.” It’s an atypical ballad driven by an arpeggio guitar part – almost soul – the time signature is the same, and the band almost dropped it from the album because of how similar it was to “Everybody Hurts.” It’s grungy like the rest of the album, but it’s still so similar in vibe. Maybe that’s one reason “Strange Currencies” didn’t do as well on the charts (except in the UK for some reason): it’s just too similar to casual fans.
Louisa Stancioff is a singer-songwriter from Maine who has been releasing songs for a couple of years and who put out her debut album a year ago. Now she’s covered this less-covered R.E.M. tune.
Though Stancioff’s guitar is suitably reverby, the grunge aesthetic that R.E.M. adopted for Monster is basically gone – there’s no guitar feedback deep in the mix in this cover. Instead, there’s almost a dream pop feel to the production, even though Stancioff does not sing in that style. She does charmingly struggles with Michael Stipe’s verbose lyrics a few times. Not super noticeably but just in a way that reminds you that he did indeed stuff some lyrics into this song – a few of the lines have well over ten syllables whereas most don’t – and that it’s a bit of a challenge in terms of pacing. It is a slow ballad after all, not something normally very wordy.
Though the cover is pretty straight-forward it feels a world away. The vibe is different and Stancioff is such a different singer than Stipe, it just sounds utterly unlike R.E.M. Take a listen below:
