Brett Newski is a Wisconsin singer-songwriter who has been releasing music in the indie vein for over a decade, sometimes under his last name alone and now with a new backing band, The Bad Intentions. Thirty years after the album release of The Wallflowers’ Bringing Down the Horse, he and his backing band have covered its most famous song.
Newski begins the song by strumming acoustic guitar, and the pace is languorous. Gone is the pumping bass and the organ. It’s still a full band performance but there’s different instrumentation.
But that’s not the big change. The big change is the tempo. Though the cover starts out slower than the original and it stays there for over 90 seconds, tempo and sometimes style change repeatedly starting with the chorus. As Newski changes his delivery and guitar playing, the Bad Intentions keep up. Though there’s no way of knowing if the cover was recorded live in studio, it has that feel. And it’s reminiscent of Bob Dylan, father of Wallflowers songwriter Jakob, arbitrarily deciding to play his songs faster or slower. Only this time the whole thing is filtered through the world of indie music, where precision is not the goal.
It’s a ride, as you never quite know where they’re going next. Enjoy:
