It's "Army Dreamers" again! This is what, the fourth version that I've featured? Plus at least one artist who was featured previously has done this song as well. I'm really surprised by that.
From an EP released in 2010, Mary Dillon puts in an outstanding vocal performance, with what is otherwise another straight reading of the song, without major changes to the arrangement. I don't think there's that much you can do with this song, which is what makes it so surprising that so many people are covering it.
I would like to thank my two years younger self for writing such clear instructions on how to install PNGOut on a Mac. My command-line skills, such as they were, have become extremely rusty, but when I needed to install PNGout again, I went from downloading the program to getting the first output written to disk in five minutes. The post also contained my command for batch operations, which I shall quote here again for future reference: for s in *.png;do pngout "$s" pngout/$s;done
This will work if you have a subfolder named "pngout" already, and will keep your input files separated from your output.
I thought I had already featured this version of "Running Up That Hill" by American Darkwave/Gothic duo Faith and The Muse, because the name rang a bell. But apparently not. I like the drum parts on this one; other than that it's not that distinctive.
An industrial/Darkwave cover by German band Tilt. From 1990, making this one of the earliest covers so far. Interesting, though perhaps a little too long.
Our first song from The Red Shoes is a techno version of "And So Is Love" by Dutch group (not actually an individual as is implied by the "Mr. A Balladeer" designation on YouTube) A Balladeer. I was actually familiar with them; I have exactly one song from a Plato sampler collection on my iPod. Perhaps it's time to check them out some more, as I rather like this one.
With the techno beat, electronic instruments and the change from female to male lead vocals (there are some female backing vocals by Charlie Dée), A Balladeer have definitely put their own stamp on it, but strangely, nothing feels like a radical change. It's close to the original tempo, just subdivided differently, and more importantly, the original's atonal chord progression is preserved. As a result, this is a highly individual version that does not stomp all over the feel of the song as originally intended.
This cover version was released as a single just two months before the release of The Director's Cut, which also contains a new version of this song. For the purpose of this blog series, covers of songs that appear on The Director's Cut will be tagged as covers of songs from The Sensual World or The Red Shoes if they came out before the release of The Director's Cut on May 16. If they came out after The Director's Cut, they will still be tagged as coming from those earlier albums unless they are clearly influenced by the Director's Cut versions. I have now heard previews of several songs and some of them are reinterpreted drastically enough to have the difference reflected in any cover versions - and good enough to have covers made of them! Which is a relief, to be honest.
It's... a transatlantic collaboration over the internet, performed live before the camera. And it's really good. That's pretty much all you need to know. Well, that and that the duo have a whole playlist of Kate Bush covers they did together. At the end of each video, the guitar part is repeated without the vocals and with the fingerings clearly visible, for those wanting to learn the parts.
So far, I've avoided songs from tribute albums, because I figured that would be cheating in some way. But in my new quest to avoid live solo renditions, this jazzy gangsta-rap arrangement, originally featured on the 1998 tribute album I Wanna Be Kate was too good to pass up. While this isn't really my bag, it's an original spin on the song and that's what interests me right now.
Video is a live performance from the release party.
The video for this, featuring clips of Kate Bush dancing from her music videos, was created by YouTube member vibesinthesky, who says s/he found the audio on the Internet and doesn't know who made it. If someone can ID the remix artist, I'd be very grateful.
Obviously, this uses Kate's original vocals and sampled instrumental parts from the original recording, which is on 'The Dreaming', arguably the second-best work of music ever created. So does it count as a cover version? It probably does as it was not authorised or commissioned by the original artist and isn't on any of her albums. But who cares? What matters more is that this is about as far from a solo acoustic cover you can get. It's also about as far from any moody/scary approach that you can get, and considering that the original is essentially a heavy metal piece*), turning it into something as joyous and lightweight as this is as much of a new spin as I've heard and seen so far. I'd like to hear more like this, please.
*) Yes, I know. Just imagine what it would sound like if it did have distorted guitar plastered on it. Jimmy Bain's already on it, all you'd need to do is invite Vivian Campbell to do a session, is all I'm saying.
I don't have a lot of time today, so I'm submitting this live piano cover of 'This Woman's Work' by Charlotte Martin without comment other than an apology for the low sound and picture quality. Good voice though. Oops, that was a comment. Gotta go, see you tomorrow, toodles!
I said yesterday that I was getting a bit sick of Kate Bush covers performed live in a solo setting, but when I saw this clip of Boston psych-folk singer Laura Jorgenson perform "Army Dreamers" at a record store, accompanying herself on the bass keys on her accordeon, I was fascinated anyway. Then I thought "nah, this doesn't quite work", but I kept watching to the end, and by the end, I quite liked it. This is mostly due to Jorgenson's voice. Watch it yourself.
Laura Jorgenson looks a bit like Sandy Denny, but she has a more powerful voice that reminds me of someone else. I can't put my finger on it though (seriously, I can't. I'm not saying this just to put any name into your head. Could be Peggy Seeger for all I know, but probably not). Anyone? Whoever it resembles, it lifts her performance above what the rather unsubtle backing promises. I hope I get to hear her perform this song again with a band, though..
Jorgenson has an album out available through Band Camp, on the pay-what-you-want model with some of the proceeds going to charity. I've decided to gamble a few bucks on it.
Reinder Dijkhuis is a translator and cartoonist living in Hoogezand, the Netherlands. He is married, with two stepkids, a dog and cat, and a bevvy of sporadic co-bloggers.
