I see myself in there upon my lover

[venta]

It's Friday, and it's a bit after 3 o'clock[*]. It's time to go underneath the covers (with the lights out).

I always recommend listening to a cover version without knowing what or who it is, so click on the link before reading ahead...

Link to cover version expired

That was Newton Faulkner covering Teardrop, originally by Massive Attack.

I saw Newton Faulkner supporting... er... I have no idea, actually. It was at the lovely Luminaire in Kilburn. Supporting someone, anyway. He was chirpy and witty onstage, bantering away with the audience and chucking in unexpected oddities like the themetune from Spongebob Squarepants. When his album was released a few months later, I bought it.

And, to be honest, was a bit disappointed. It's nice enough, it's just a bit... wet. It's probably right up your alley if you like sensitive blokes doing nice acoustic, gentle, mellow songs. Just I largely don't.

I'm still unsure about this cover. I'll grant that it's an interesting attempt, but I was a very big fan of Mezzanine and just find this a bit lacking in menace, by comparison.

[*] Sorry I'm late. The last few days have been a bit tits-up, as I've been largely offline, and have only just been allowed to have my PC back once Sysadmin #1 finished scraping all the crap off it. It seems that even comparatively reputable sites can have disreputable Javascript in their adverts, which can do Bad Things. Yes, yes, adblock, I know. However, let's just say that I can haz not only cheezburger, but viruz. Still, I s'pose it was at least a lolviruz. I guess it was in my harddrivez, nommin' my filez.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Don't enjoy this as much as the original (which I know quite well), but I do like the sound of the stringed instrument used. I'm assuming it must be a guitar or a sitar or something, but it has a weirdly harpsichord-like quality to it.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Courtesy of the unusually thorough sleeve notes, I can tell you that the track contains:

Vocals/Guitar/Drums/Piano by Newton Faulkner, and Electric Guitar by Mike Spencer.

So any unusual sound is presuambly a post-processing thingy, an electric effect, or a funky technique that normal people wot not of.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing just an electric guitar setting.

Twiddly knobs! They're for twiddling!

[zotz]

Could be a wah-wah pedal. You can definitely get a superficially sitar-like effect with them.

It's OK, this. Definitely shows up the ropy lyrics.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Most Massive Attack is way better if you don't listen to the lyrics :)

[zotz]

Could be a lot worse. There are some songs which have lyrics so awful that they only work as instrumentals.

[venta.livejournal.com]

While conversely, many songs with quite interesting lyrics have them delivered so incomprehensibly that you'd never know.

Out of curiosity, do you have any particular citations for great-song-with-awful-lyrics ? I'm sure it's something I've thought in the past, but can't call any specific instances to mind now.

[zotz]

My usual example's Misty. Lovely tune, cringeworthy words.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Creepy film too (Play Misty For Me, about a stalker).

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Quite a few Whitesnake tracks fall into this category for me.

Blood Luxury in particular might be one of my favourite tracks if the lyrics had been written by They Might be Giants instead of David Coverdale. (And I speak as someone who mostly ignores lyrics in music.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, is that the "great song, shame about the lyrics" category, or the "great lyrics, shame you can't hear them" category :)

(I'm not familiar with the song, so can't guess.)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Definitely the former!

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I now have that as an earworm but with the two Johns singing.

Surprisingly good.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Wow! Your earworms can do never-before-heard cover versions? That's so cool!

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Yup. I can - er, what's the equivalent of visualise? auralise? songs sometimes. It comes from years of playing silly improv games and imitating people when singing karaoke, and the like.

(Kate Bush is a nice easy one to hear doing other people's songs, as is James Hetfield.)


Edited to make the -ises match, because that's dissonant in itself. Synaesthesia is usually cool, but sometimes it sucks. :D

[brrm.livejournal.com]

Have you heard the Elbow cover of this song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l9Q2m1P4Xo)? [Youtube link] Apart from the dodgy note at the start, I quite like it.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ooh, no, I hadn't - thanks for that!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I bet Mr Faulkner got beaten up a lot at school. This is nice enough, but pretty feeble compared with the orig.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I dunno - according to Wikipedia, his middle name is Battenberg which makes him just about the coolest person ever (according to me ;)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

That could explain a thing or two, if it means he's related to Prince Philip. (Or that he's rather spongy.)

[lnr]

Mmmm cake!

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

If you caught it from I can haz cheezburger, I got that one too a while ago, and stopped allowing it to run Javascript on my computer thereby missing the latest incarnation.

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

Massive Attack please!

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

As to the lyrics, "Love, love is a verb, love is a doing word" is sufficiently wonderful to justify the entire rest of the song by itself.