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. Continue reading »
A Widespread Panic Halloween show is a tradition, and, after skipping last year, the band was back on stage Halloween night, making up for lost time in their performance in Savannah, Georgia.
Fans knew they were in for something special as the whole band took the stage dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland. (John Bell was the Cheshire Cat, Jimmy Herring was Tweedle Dee/Dum, Dave Schools was The Executioner, JoJo Hermann was The Caterpillar, Duane Trucks was The Queen of Hearts and Domingo Ortiz was the Mad Hatter.) Continue reading »
Though not released as a single, “Nutshell” has probably become the best known song from Alice in Chains‘ second acoustic EP, Jar of Flies. (The first EP ever to debut on Billboard at #1, apparently.) Lead singer Layne Staley was writing more and more of his own lyrics and “Nutshell,” like many of his songs, concerns his struggles with addiction.
Carlie Hanson is a singer-songwriter from Wisconsin, who has put out a couple of albums and EPs over the last five years. She released her new cover of “Nutshell” on the 22nd anniversary of Staley’s death.
The song is famous for its extended acoustic guitar intro, just featuring guitarist Jerry Cantrell playing chords, with some bass accompaniment for nearly a minute before the drums and Staley’s vocals come in. Hanson begins her version with a loop and some prominent drums. But she wastes little in starting her vocal and once she starts singing the song much closer resembles the original. Though her pace is faster, her acoustic guitar moves forward in the mix and the loop fades.
For the wordless refrain, she piles on group vocals and drops the guitar fill, giving the vocals much more focus. These vocals feel a bit like a lament and the repeat as this version’s coda until they drop away and all we’re left with is a guitar repeating the main lick.
Though it starts out sounding very different, it’s actually a quite faithful rendition that manages to both recall the original but sound different enough. Check it out:
Follow all our Best of 2023 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.
I like to think that badass lady in the artwork up there (done by our own Hope Silverman!) embodies the spirit of this year’s list. Not that they’re all CBGB-style punk songs—though there are a couple—but in her devil-may-care attitude. “Who says I shouldn’t do a hardcore cover of the Cranberries? A post-punk cover of Nick Drake? A hip-hop cover of The Highwaymen? Screw that!”
As with most good covers, the 50 covers we pulled out among the thousands we listened to bring a healthy blend of reverence and irreverence. Reverence because the artists love the source material. Irreverence because they’re not afraid to warp it, bend it, mold it in their own image. A few of the songs below are fairly obscure, but most you probably already know. Just not like this.
“For me, ‘Dancing in the Dark’ isn’t a song about romance, but instead a desperate plea to break out of some degraded, stagnant situation. The narrator is filled with angst, self doubt, and the only way out is to the sheer force of unwavering will power,” says Deer Tick guitarist/vocalist Ian O’Neil. “Bruce really shows us who he is on this one and it looks an awful lot like the rest of us.”
There are a lot of Weird Al covers out there (okay, maybe not a lot, but more than you might think). This is new though. This band didn’t cover one of Weird Al’s parodies. They didn’t even cover a Weird Al original, like “Dare to Be Stupid.” They covered one of his polka medleys (a subject I interviewed Al about in Cover Me the book—excerpt at The AV Club). Meaning, they covered polka versions of hits by Miley Cyrus, One Direction, Gotye, and many more, all in a brisk medley. A very silly music video brings it home. Continue reading »
Last month we posted a Live Collection featuring Ryan Adams covers from throughout his career. It featured 46 songs, which seemed like enough to hold us for quite a while. Guess not. Now we have another from the über-prolific Mr. Adams. It’s his rendition of Alice in Chains’ “Nutshell,” released on a new tour-only 7”. Continue reading »