For a cellist who frequently covers new wave, goth, and art-rock songs, David Bowie’s “Heroes” would seem one of the more obvious song selections. But San Francisco’s Erica Mulkey, who performs as Unwoman and appears regularly at sci-fi and steampunk conventions, says she resisted “Heroes” for years. Though one of her favorite songs, it seemed too obvious, and too often covered. Hard to find a fresh way to do it, especially after his passing. But backers on her Patreon pushed her to do it, and she ended up happy they did.Continue reading »
We named San Francisco cellist Unwoman’s Uncoveredthe second best covers album of 2011 and next week, she releases the sequel Lemniscate: Uncovered Volume 2. She loops cello and vocal parts to make dark symphonies out of songs by MGMT and Amanda Palmer. We’re excited to premiere a highlight, her version of fellow big-voiced temptress Florence and the Machine.Continue reading »
This Week on Bandcamp rounds up our favorite covers to hit the site in the past seven days.
This week’s set puts goth cello up against grunge noise, orchestral pomp against folksy throwback. It also features a couple familiar faces. Download our favorite Bandcamp tracks this week below.Continue reading »
This Week on Bandcamp rounds up our favorite covers to hit the site in the past seven days.
Something of a dreamy electronic feel in today’s bunch. Hazy beats and watery synth burble along under most of these tracks in the service of what is, in several cases, really a folk aesthetic underneath. As the temperatures rise, these sounds soundtrack those moments sitting under the sun in a half-awake daze when it’s too hot to move. Well, except for the Tom Waits cover, which is a different approach from a familiar name.Continue reading »
This Week on Bandcamp rounds up our favorite covers to hit the site in the past seven days.
Once again we delve back into Bandcamp to find the week’s top free covers. There’s a bit of an ’80s theme today, with covers of songs from Pixies, the Cure, and Wham! The two that round them out buck the trend a bit: a Buffy Sainte-Marie song from 1963 and a Dirty Projectors song from 2004. The average of 1963 and 2004 is 1983 though, so there you go!Continue reading »
As regular readers know, here at Cover Me we put together a Best Covers Ever list every month for a celebrated artist. We’ve recently done the Pet Shop Boys and Sheryl Crow. And before them we did the biggie – The Beatles – and before them, Bob Dylan! But every now and again, there’s a particular genre that’s crying out for the Best Covers Ever treatment – and this month it’s the Dark Genre. It’s goth!
So why now, you ask? Are goth covers really a thing? And why don’t Alien Sex Fiend or Fields of the Nephilim have their own Best Covers Ever features?
Fair questions, all. First off, goth music is everywhere right now. It may have emerged out of the UK post-punk scene and enjoyed its most innovative period from 1980 to 1982, but it’s now the reason we have Whitby Goth Weekends in April and November (well, that and Count Dracula), World Goth Day on May 22, and goth nights down the Hatchet Inn in Bristol most nights, particularly Thursday. It’s also why we have heaps of goth books on the market right now, from John Robb’s The Art of Darkness to Lol Tolhurst’s Goth: A History and Cathi Unsworth’s Season of the Witch, all trying to explain goth’s lasting influence as a musical subculture: the fixation with death, the dark theatricality, the Victorian melodrama, the leather, the thick black eyeliner, the fishnet tights, the deviance, the sex, the deviant sex, and, of course, spiders.Continue reading »
