Jun 122017
 
lower dens abba

Last year, 33 1/3 – the music book series that dissects classic albums – hosted a tribute to three of those albums at Brooklyn’s Northside Festival: Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville (covered by Frankie Cosmos), Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson (covered by Ava Luna), and Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality (covered by Deradoorian). And this past weekend, they repeated the trick, with three new bands covering three new albums.

Lower Dens headlined the event, covering ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits (not quite the same as covering a full album, but since ABBA were basically a singles band we’ll let it slide). This sort of cheesy pop is right in the band’s wheelhouse, as heard a few years back in their cover of Hall & Oates’ “Maneater.” For the ABBA set, they performed the tracks as karaoke-plus-live-drumming, with singer Jana Hunter belting in a way she doesn’t often get to in Lower Dens. The karaoke format would be a little disappointing to fans who might want to see more Lower Dens-esq rearrangements of these hits, but her pipes do the songs justice. This “S.O.S.” cover follows Portishead’s last year, our #1 cover of 2016. Continue reading »

Oct 202016
 
TheLandBelow

Later this year, we’ll be posting our year-end lists. One category we don’t include is “Best New Cover Performer” – but if we did, The Land Below would be a shoe-in. We’ve already heard him beautifully cover Slipknot, Alanis Morisette, and Eagle-Eye Cherry (how’s that for a diverse source list?). Now he’s back with another unexpected pick, Moby’s “Porcelain.” Less unexpected: he does a fantastic job, once again. Continue reading »

Jun 162015
 

Is there an unwritten rule that all of the best dream pop has to come from Baltimore, Maryland? With Beach House, Future Islands, and Lower Dens all hailing from the birthplace of the Star Spangled Banner, it seems like it is. Lower Islands, whose latest release Escape From Evil is making every indie critic swoon, celebrated their recent success with this cover of Hall & Oates “Maneater.” Continue reading »

Jan 122011
 

Quickies rounds up new can’t-miss covers. Download ‘em below.

• Latin fusion guitarist Al Di Meola just released an instrumental cover of the Beatles‘ “Strawberry Fields Forever.” His guitar gently weeps with aching emotion as the band shuffles along beside.
Continue reading »