We’ve written about a few covers from the online music education service and channel Musora already. They invite bands into their studio and throw a song at them to cover in their own style and record the process for YouTube. The hope is that the band is unfamiliar with the song. Recently, they asked Toronto disco band The Free Label to cover a grunge classic.
“Them Bones” is among the most popular Alice in Chains songs to cover, but it was not a song that The Free Label knew. This makes sense because, even though “Them Bones” is one of Alice in Chains’ biggest hits, it wasn’t that big a hit, and a band like The Free Label probably doesn’t listen to a lot of grunge. (Just guessing.)
From the opening, the song is completely reinvented. They don’t jump into the wordless hook immediately, instead there’s bass, clavinet, drums and guitar setting the scene for nearly 20 seconds. Then they flip the wordless hook into a staccato stab that could very much come from a ’70s disco song.
For the verses there’s a soulful vocal and funky guitar. The stab comes back for the chorus before there’s a horn and keyboard refrain. Just to keep us on our toes there’s also a drum solo before the guitar solo. And yes, the guitar solo sounds nothing like the original. The Free Label’s version of “Them Bones” finishes with a run up the scale.
For just a drastically different arrangement and feel, it’s still clearly “Them Bones.” And it feels kind of miraculous that this band is able to achieve that balance in such a short period of time. The finished performance – on their first take – is at 12:31:
