Laufey Creates Emotional, Raw Cover of Phoebe Bridgers’ “Savior Complex”

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Oct 022024
 
laufey savior complex

For the latest, “Like A Version,” the long-running covers segment on the Australian radio station Triple J, Icelandic singer Laufey chose Phoebe Bridgers’ most pulling song: “Savior Complex”. The artist stands on the stage in front of a chamber group of strings. She reminds us of a singer straight out of the 1920s with her flowing pale yellow dress and tall black boots.

First, the violins start. Then her voice enters, no FX, completely raw. Real.

As we make our way to the line “Smoking in the car” the strings get gradually more complex. Then there is the pre-chorus where vocally, Laufey utilizes seamless near-yodel jump. After the chorus, the deeper cellos and basses enter. After the instrumental break, the voice blends with fingerpicked guitar, a beautiful sonic melding. Then the perfectly vibrato-d “Baby you’re a vampire” nearly brings us to tears.

At the three-quarters point, we get another stunning instrumental break, this time featuring a call and response between the first and second violins. The energy is constantly changing between loving and mournful. It ended unresolved and tense, never reaching the tonic.

For more great Pheobe Bridgers covers, check out this link!

Five Good Covers: “Misty” (Erroll Garner)

 Posted by at 9:00 am  1 Response »
Jan 232024
 

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

Misty covers

Popular song titles end up as film titles often enough–“Singin’ in the Rain,” “Dazed and Confused,” “American Pie,” “[I] Walk the Line.” But how many songs are referenced by a film title? Only one: Erroll Garner’s 1954 hit “Misty.” The film Play Misty for Me, Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut from 1971, calls it out.

The film follows a jazz radio DJ who spins “mellow groove” for his listeners each evening. One night someone calls in a simple request: “Play ‘Misty’ for me.” The next evening she calls again. “Play ‘Misty’ for me,” she repeats, and hangs up. This psychological suspense thriller hinges–or unhinges–on this repetition.

A hundred good versions of “Misty” were in circulation by 1971, but the caller doesn’t say which one she wants to hear. And the DJ doesn’t ask. (I get it: the film must advance its plot and not get mired in detail, but as a music lover I’m disappointed, and still just curious: What was her jam?) The DJ puts on the instrumental by the Erroll Garner Trio–the original “Misty” recording.

The song was original in both senses of the word: being the first, and being wholly unique. Garner himself was an original: a self-taught prodigy with a style all his own, who could not read or write music notation, but whose unorthodox creations were some of the era’s crowning achievements, both artistically and commercially.

Garner’s instrumental plays a few times during the film, both as part of the action, and as part of the score. In the world of “Play Misty for Me,” there are no covers of “Misty,” and no lyrics.

Moviegoers mostly knew the words anyway, through popular versions by the likes of Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Johnny Mathis. But audiences may have been clueless about the substance of the lyrics. “Misty” was the “Every Breath You Take” of its day: it passed as a love ballad or torch song, but it invited a darker reading, with each verse hinting at a serious emotional disturbance, a fatal attraction. Screenwriter Jo Heims had the song’s double-edged meaning in mind, and wove her story around its tale of obsession. As with the radio caller’s request, you hear it once and it’s anodyne; hear it again and something feels wrong.
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