jj has a long history of covering R&B songs. For their friend ceo’s birthday this year, they covered “Birthday Sex” by Jeremih, and prior to that, they covered Akon‘s “Troublemaker.” Throw in their cover of Lil’ Wayne, and you could nearly call them prolific cover artists for a full-time non-cover band. So, considering their love of covering R&B songs, it should come as no surprise that their most recent cover is of The-Dream‘s “Right Side of My Brain.” Continue reading »
Atlas Sound is Bradford Cox (of Deerhunter)’s solo project. In it, he doesn’t stray too far from the fuzzed-out sound of his main band, but he does take some detours. Yesterday on his Deerhunter blog, he released two new sets of recordings, Bedroom Data Bank Vols. I and II. Vol. I contains two covers, one of Kurt Vile and one of Bob Dylan. Continue reading »
Arcade Fire continued their run towards world domination earlier this year with their highly anticipated new release, The Suburbs. It debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, proving their popularity and exhibiting the total acceptance of indie music by the mainstream culture. The Suburbs is also proving to contain a rather coverable group of tunes; folks seem to love singing “We Used to Wait” in particular (as we have pointed out before). Calexico continued the Suburbs love, but bucked the trend with the brooding “Ready to Start” at their set at the Festiwal Ars Cameralis in Katowice, Poland on November 18. No surprise the song’s in their heads; the group recently completed a three-week tour opening for Arcade Fire. Continue reading »
Neon Indian‘s “Should Have Taken Acid With You,” from his debut album Psychic Chasms, is a lovable track, about regretting letting go of a chance at love (or a chance to get high with someone), but he’s not killing himself over it. Its mellow and hazy tones bring to mind a humid summer day, perfect for reminiscing. That album and song were the epitome of the so-called “chillwave” movement that took off during the summer of 2009. New York’s Oberhofer apparently enjoyed chillwave’s renaissance and decided to take on this iconic song from it. Continue reading »
The National have had an impressive year. Critics heaped praise upon their new album, High Violet, which debuted in the top 10. They’ve opened speaking engagements for President Obama and filled venues across the country. So it makes sense that folks would be clamoring to cover their songs. We’ve already heard covers of High Violet cuts “Sorrow” and “Anyone’s Ghost.” Today, we present a cover of “Runaway” by the French artist 835. Full disclosure: unlike the other two, we may have had something to do with nudging the artist towards this one.
835 covering The National isn’t something you’d necessarily think would work. 835’s music grounds itself in the electronic dance world and, while it can be a bit dark, doesn’t even begin to reach the level of melancholy that drives The National. Thankfully, they don’t try to out-morose anyone on “Runaway.” Instead, they transform it to fit their sound. Via effects-heavy acoustic guitar and plenty of synthesizer, the track definitely moves closer to the dance floor than the lonely end of the bar. Continue reading »
Seven years ago, Easy Star All-Stars took on a daunting challenge: reimagining one of the most beloved albums of all time, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, as a reggae album. This seems like a ridiculous idea, but they managed to pull it off. Seven years later, the All-Stars decided it was time to revisit the revisit. Enter Dubber Side of the Moon, a remix album pushing material that was already vastly different from the original songs further towards dubstep. While the reggae roots of the album shine through, the remixes bring the songs into a new era of digitized music.
Before I dig in too much further, I should confess that I’ve never been a huge reggae fan. It’s been something I’ve enjoyed in passing from time to time, but not much more. However, the more I listened to both Dubber and Dub Side of the Moon, the more I found that I really could enjoy reggae. Continue reading »