Heart on a Stick
Very Close to, if not actually in, the CD player:
seen/heard ° stream album ° buy
seen/heard ° stream album ° buy
seen/heard ° stream album ° buy
seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
seen/heard ° listen ° preorder
Wolves Like Us
posted 08/11/2006
It’s Fridaydammit, and while I’m burrowing back and finishing some old business it’s nice to know someone’s plowing forward, even if they’re just reseeding fresh ground. Y’dig?Yeah, me neither. Let’s just have us some music.
Nothing makes me happier than a new Local H track, and they just posted a TV on the Radio cover on their myspace page along with this bit of news:
we started recording our new record two mondays ago at million yen in chicago. the drums, bass, and basic guitars are all finished. we started vocals and have finished five songs. we recorded some covers (7?) for possible b-sides and e.p.'s. what else? i don't know. anyway, that's what we've been up to. how 'bout you?
Me? I’m just all kinds of happy, and (thanks to the folks at the Local H forum) have happily unearthed a file of the cover to share. It’s only an m4a, and it’s not very clean – the track (again, streaming on their myspace) is just labeled ‘TVOTR cover roughun’ – but it’s what I got.
Scott Lucas is, like the best musicians, a music fan, and gladly gawks past the post-grunge pinnings with which his band is saddled. The last time I saw H Lucas talked about The Rapture, Soulwax, Daft Punk, worked a bit of Gang of Four into his set. The TV on the Radio song he’s covering, here – “Wolf Like Me,” from their stupidly-named forthcoming CD Return to Cookie Mountain – isn’t much of a stretch for Lucas, musically; it not only has an aggressive tempo, but a bit of loud-soft-loud, a bit of double-time explosiveness at the end.
Here, while I talk, compare the two versions:
Yes, the original track is superior; I don’t think Lucas was looking to make anything other than a straightforward tribute (the TVotR CD isn’t even out in the States). But just because he is who he is, the meat of the track undergoes a transformation.
Obviously, any racial overtones the song might have had – well, don’t worry your mongrel mind, they’re gone. Strangely, though, Lucas’ lycanthropes wind up totally desexualized. Despite the edge-of-ecstasy beast-fuck lyrics, Local H is not a sexual animal. The band’s métier is self-aware failure, masochistic self-hatred. And “Wolf Like Me” is, in Lucas’ hands, a pathetic, chest-beating howl of desperation. Physically, the body’s not going to explode orgasmically; it’s about to fail. But, God, I like it. He’s cursed, the song transfers the tragedy. “Gotta bust that box, gotta gut that fish.” Jeez, it’s just like another dead-end job you hate.
Though some of it’s a byproduct of the file quality, I like the lo-fi sound. The sonic layers in the original are fantastic, but I like the cover’s thuddy immediacy. I love the feedback. God, I love the feedback. TV’s werewolf is fuzzy and seductive. H’s is mangey, moshy.
And at least it’s not another cover of “Crazy.”
*
There’s nowhere to buy the H track, of course. As a substitute I’ll link (again) to the band’s covers-heavy 2004 No Fun EP. Three great H originals plus do-overs of The Ramones, The Godfathers, Primal Scream. That can be bought here.
YES? YOU THERE IN THE BACK?