Back in 2015, Iron and Wine teamed with Band of Horses‘ leader Ben Bridwell to record a covers album Sing Into My Mouth. Ten years later, they’ve reunited for a new covers EP entitled Making Good Time. We discussed their cover of Kendrick and SZA’s “Luther” last month and, now that the EP has been released, we can see that this cover both hinted at what would be on the EP and really didn’t.
Some of the songs on Sing Into My Mouth were a little more obscure than others. But with Making Good Time, they really embraced the hits. So there’s “Luther” and a Top 10 Roxy Music hit from the ’80s and the Foreigner song we’re about to discuss. The most obscure song is a boygenius track; everything else was a big hit. But nothing else is a hip-hop cover, so if you wanted to hear more tracks like “Luther,” alas.
“I Want to Know What Love Is” was Foreigner’s biggest hit, topping the charts in many countries and going platinum in both the US and the UK. It embodies ’80s excess about as well as any huge ’80s hit: there are keyboards galore, the drums are huge, as is the bass, Lou Gramm sings everything at a 9 (until he gets to scream) and, of course, there’s the choir. It’s not subtle.
Sam Bean of Iron and Wine and Bridwell do not reinvent the wheel on their new cover. They play it pretty straight. But they play it on acoustic guitars and piano. And though the piano and bass reverb try to capture some of the layers of the keyboards of the original (and there is a subtle organ), what there is in their version is space. Bean’s and Bridwell’s voices are up front as is the acoustic guitar. Their voices sing the lyrics with passion but little of Gramm’s belting. And there’s a trumpet solo in the coda in lieu of the choir.
What the cover reveals for someone like me is that this is indeed an earworm. (You already knew that.) With everything toned down a little bit – frankly not that much, it’s not like it’s just two singers and two acoustic guitars – we get a simple, yearning song of hope for a future relationship that will be realer than the past ones.
