Source: Pixabay
With the recent turnaround of vinyl sales, the album has started to regain some lost ground as an art-form. We have all been so spoilt for choice with the numerous streaming services and instant downloads, that the ritual of listening to say The Beatles’ White Album from start to finish in order has become as rarity. A Beatles playlist on Spotify cherry-picking the more famous songs has unfortunately made track order debates that can split a band apart now irrelevant. The upturn in vinyl LP sales and listening habits means more and more music fans making a point of playing an album in its entirety, rather than clicking shuffle or skipping to the hits.
To celebrate the rise of the classic album format, and in part inspired by last years Ryan Adams cover of the fantastic 1989 by Taylor Swift, HTF ask some of our favourite artists which records they would take on. So many artists are constantly being asked which tracks to cover on numerous radio shows. But what if they were asked to cover an entire album? Would they do a faithful interpretation or completely have a re-haul and create their own masterpiece from the foundations of an other. Would Metallica take on the The Wurzels’ classic Vintage Cider? How about Blur covering Shed Seven’s Maximum High? Both didn’t reply to our emails so sadly we shall never find out. Luckily these five acts did!
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First up are the American alternative act Faulkner covering Mumford & Sons’ Babel.
Rick Ross would be featured extensively for some ad-lib profanity and his famous gasps that sound like an artery being clogged. Of course Faulkner’s signature mini-moog sound would take center stage in the production. No bass whatsoever because why not? However, keeping some essential elements from the original work is important to us, so our drummer and I would grow moustaches, wear suspenders and visit a lot of micro breweries.”
Check out Faulkner’s new single here:
Source: Album artwork
The Hearts opted for Oasis‘ debut album Definitely Maybe.
“It’s a bit of a cliché, but to be honest because of the option to put our own spin on it I’d like us to do Oasis – Definitely Maybe. I remember working in a pub down the road from where grew up and I’d watch bands come in week in, week out and play songs off this album and it always sounding horrible. Amazing songs murdered in front of 50 year old working class men. Brutal. Wouldn’t enjoy doing a faithful version of this album, but would absolutely love to do it with our own vibe, really think about the songs sonically and give it a different identity. On a songwriting level, Definitely Maybe is up there with the greatest. The songs would sound great in any style. So yeah… Let’s do that one, maybe… no, definitely”
The Hearts drop their excellent new single ‘Lovers Drug‘ here:
Source: Album artwork
The Rubens went for Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange.
“Channel Orange would be our pick as album to cover. Back in 2012 when it came out we were on the road a lot and this album was huge for us, as it was for most people with ears. Tracks like ‘Thinkin Bout You’, ‘Lost’ and ‘Super Rich Kids‘ were instantly attention-grabbing, enough pop hooks to pique your interest and enough shit you’d never heard to delve deeper for more. His lyrics on ‘Bad Religion’ are a standout. Not many artists can tell stories this vivid and make it sound so effortless. The guy coaxed Andre 3000 out of hibernation to drop a verse on ‘Pink Matter’ for God’s sake. That was some special stuff.
Channel Orange isn’t broke so of course we can’t fix it. We’d probably do the album start to finish as it is, then leave a message at the end calling out to Frank.
Where are yah Frank? The world’s waiting for album 2. Please write back.”
The Rubens‘ debut album is out May 20th, the band will headline The Dome, London on May 26th and will also be appearing at The Great Escape Festival.
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The Clean Cut Kid’s chose Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago.
“It’s an album that changed things for a lot of people. It was just so different and beautiful and the story about how it was written and made turned Justin Vernon into this mythological being who everyone needed to see to believe. It was an important album for us individually, the sounds and choices he made in the making of it really inspired us. It was an album everyone was listening to and no one got sick of, and still no one is sick of nearly 10 years on. Everyone wants to stand out and be different but still make something that stands the test of time and that’s what For Emma, Forever Ago did. It’s a true masterpiece.
You could never top this album or improve on it, so that wouldn’t be why we’d cover it. We’d just be trying to make something different for fun and out of curiosity! We’d probably take it to a different sonic, we’d fuzz it up and layer mad drums and big fat vocal parts. It’d be cool to see what a track like ‘re:stacks’ would be like with drums and keys.”
Check out the Clean Cut Kid’s new single here:
Source: Album artwork
Kingsley Chapman and the Murder chose the soundtrack to Cabaret.
“It’s really difficult trying to think of an album that I’d like to cover in full for a couple of reasons. Firstly cover versions get a bad rap. We’re living in an age where our universal expectation of “the cover version” is that it should be a note perfect carbon copy of the original. Emotions must be xeroxed, meanings lost, songs must be belted out with the precision, charm and soul of a laser guided missile in order to get to the next level of the competition. Blame X Factor, blame The Voice, blame cruise ships, blame karaoke bars, blame whatever you want it doesn’t matter. Talent show judges can tell you that these singers have “made the song their own” as much as they want, it’ll never be true, but if it keeps them off the streets and out of harms way who are we to begrudge them their fun.
We covered David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ at a gig in London in January a few days after he died but it wasn’t done in tribute to Bowie, it was for a friend of ours that had committed suicide a week before. We used the Bowie tune to highlight the strangeness of the overwhelming outpouring of grief that was being laid out for someone hardly any of us knew, whilst at the very same time we were going through a very different grieving process ourselves over someone we were close to. On the TV and social media everyone was saying how their grief over Bowie was personal to them – and I felt it too, he’s my ultimate musical hero – but at the same time good friends of ours and members of the band were going through an extremely difficult grieving process of their own, it was an impossibly upsetting and confusing time. We covered the song at funeral procession pace, making it start as a torch song, not an anthem.
Would I want to cover an album that is generally regarded as perfect? What would be the point in that? Would I want to cover an album I thought wasn’t quite up to scratch presuming that my own little brand of magic fairy dust would bring it up to perfection? That’s more than a bit presumptuous of my limited abilities and certainly not my style. So really I think I’d just cover an album that I really like or one that means something to me in some way ie. cover it because I love the songs on it.
So for that reason the album I’d like to cover in full is the movie soundtrack to the musical Cabaret from 1972. I remember watching the film as a kid in the middle of the night in my bedroom and thinking it was the weirdest, most stupendous and scariest thing I’d ever seen. The songs mirror the production perfectly – it’s the sound of drunken decadence about to be smashed into a million pieces; of foreboding terror; of glamour; of lust; of the fickle nature of fame; and ultimately it’s the sound of tragedy. It’s absolutely perfect. I’ve never before experienced a musical that has dragged me in as much as this one, I even saw it with Will Young starring as the Emcee a couple of years ago (twice!), he was phenomenal. Most successful musicals have two or maybe three songs that provide the major hooks in the show with one of those being the intended showstopper. Cabaret has at least seven showstoppers. From the awesomely iconic, cool and playful intro of “Willkommen”, through the torchiest of torch songs via ominously hard hitting tunes detailing Germany’s fascist future and insanely accurate observations on the finances of the Weimar Republic, to the absolute finale of finales – the song ‘Cabaret’ itself – a misleadingly difficult and dark song urging the listener towards devastation, not glitz and glamour.”
Check out Kingsley and the Murder’s version of David Bowie’s ‘Heroes‘ here:
Some great ideas and big thanks to all the artists who got involved. If you can think of an album that another band could have improved or at least had a jolly good go at let us know.
Now enjoy The Flaming Lips and friends covering Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon
