Ethel Cain kept it pretty simple when explaining her approach to covering the Drive-By Truckers’ song “Angels and Fuselage”: “You really don’t have to mess with perfection.” She offered up her cover of the song during an appearance on “Like a Version” on Triple J in Australia.
The song first appeared on the DBT’s 2001 album Southern Rock Opera and was written by the band’s lead singer, Patterson Hood. It is the penultimate track on the double record and is a first-person, almost minute-by-minute account of a plane crash. (The album loosely tells the story of a southern rock band very similar to Lynyrd Skynyrd.)
“I just told the band, ‘We gotta do it straight up’,” Cain said. “I was nitpicking with them, down to the little guitar licks and whatnot. The bends and the chords. I said ‘everything in this song is created so perfectly and specifically that it has to be true to the record. We’re just gonna give it out best shot to capture it.'”
And, amazingly, they really do. The version is a straight-ahead cover of an incredibly moving song.
