Deep Voices #94: Quiet Covers

with Nick Catchdubs

and

Apr 16, 2024

Deep Voices #94 on Spotify
Deep Voices #94 on Apple Music

Deep Voices is a playlist and an essay, an interview, a collection of thoughts, and, sometimes, a collaboration. This edition is brought to you by me, your regular narrator Matthew Schnipper, and Nick Barat of the newly launched Catchdini newsletter. Check out Nick’s newsletter and consider a paid subscription to Deep Voices. Thank you!

Some years ago I was watching the movie Greenberg and, in one of the character’s bedrooms, was a poster for the album for Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom’s 2005 album Days of Mars. What the heck? An obscure record, one released five years before the movie was released, I wonder how it got in there. Does Ben Stiller love sprawling sonic landscapes? Around the same time, I watched Mud, featuring Matthew McConaughey. In that movie, a boy no older than ten wears what appears to be a homemade Fugazi T-shirt. Who made that? Why? There’s got to be someone as delighted by this stuff as me, I thought. Who do I tell about these kinds of very specific inconsequential pop culture crossovers?

The answer was always Nick Barat, aka Nick Catchdubs. A voracious consumer of media, his delight in the collision of cultures is unparalleled. His appreciation of esoterica knows no bounds. No one has as much delight hearing Everclear in a coffee shop, or finding an old issue of Option at the thrift store. He’d be just as happy to comb through the Columbia House ads as to read the interview with Diamanda Galas.

In the mid-2000s, Nick took his vast knowledge and enthusiasm to the web, running the blog catchdubs.com. Near daily, he’d post a cornucopia of links and information that was essential reading. Eventually, the site wound down as he brought his knowledge to The Fader as an editor (while launching the mag’s own blog), then co-founding Fool’s Gold Records/DJing around the world for the last 15 years or so. Busy guy! I was elated, though, that he has brought back his love of stuff in the form of a Substack newsletter, Catchdini. So, in celebration, I asked him if he wanted to collaborate on a playlist. He suggested a theme of quiet cover songs, by nature a warped meeting of minds. So, for this week’s Deep Voices, find five songs from him and five from me. Below, find Nick’s treatise on the quiet cover and then playlist notes from both of us. —Schnpper

QUIET COVERS

Growing up with (to say nothing of professionally creating and obsessing over) samples, flips and collage art in all forms, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that I’m big into cover songs.

The original bootleg!

Crafting something new out of existing art — in a way that somehow makes it yours — has always scratched a brain itch. At their core, cover songs are another form of creatively manipulating the world around you. I love to share and talk about my favorites.

In the spirit of Deep Voices, I thought the chilled out “quiet cover” could be a focus for discussion. In the wrong hands, it’s a parlor trick — an ironic gesture, or a way for a movie trailer to mangle an old pop song and let you know (via children’s choir and/or dubstep fart) this is not the Spider-Man you expected.

But at their best? A true recontextualization. If the note-perfect “faithful” interpretation is cosplay karaoke for tribute bands, the quiet cover is a conversation between the source material, the flipper, and their audience. Nostalgic, anarchic, whatever. Bring your baggage and choose your own adventure.

Playlist notes (Nick):

The Lemonheads, “Skulls”
Evan Dando! Imagine being the perfect person to play yassified Ethan Hawke? I knew this hunk from newsstand makeouts before I ever heard a Lemonheads song. When I did, the vibes tracked with everything else. Turning the EC Comics horror punk of the Misfits “Skulls” into a doe-eyed dorm-room serenade is himbo GOAT behavior.

Frente!, “Bizarre Love Triangle”
Speaking of bottle-spinning, I’m sure this was on a geriatric millennial makeout playlist somewhere near you. I can smell the Gap Dream already (top notes: Osmanthus and Tangerine). “BLT” has the narcotizing quality of other alt-era slow jams, but less self harm-y than, like, Mazzy Star. They have an exclamation point in the name! The cassingle was pink! They’re Australian! (On that note, Triple J’s “Like A Version” series is an essential YouTube follow for fellow cover freaks. Slow jams aplenty, but my favorite might be Confidence Man's jock jam performance art).

Junior Parker, “Taxman”
How did George Harrison's proto-Libertarian banger become a Cypress Hill smokeout soundtrack? Junior Parker. This record is deep fried, I love it... a funky lament for everyone who just finished swimming through 1099s. Other fav Beatles reconfigurations on this tip include Ramsey Lewis' "Mother Nature's Son" and Gabor Szabo's "Dear Prudence."

Blood Sisters, “Ring My Bell”
Soul Jazz has done the lord's work of compiling rare nugs into digestible thematic anthologies of tropicalia, punk 45s, ’80s rap, and lots and lots and lots of reggae. Shocking, I know. Of all the heaters on their HUSTLE! album of disco re-versions, none warm me up like the seven and a half minutes of the Blood Sisters' "Ring My Bell." There's something poetic about taking a chemically-enhanced Studio 54 freakout into morning-after comedown territory.

Cat Power, “Sea Of Love”
Is bleary-eyed emotion the key to unlocking quiet cover magic? Or am I just a huge softie? Two things can be true at once. Louisiana bellboy Phil Philips' only hit is perfectly plain spoken—“I want to tell you just how much I love you”—turned fodder for Iggy Pop and Al Pacino alike. Cat Power's autoharp version is the definitive cover in my book. Wobbly, almost breaking. She doesn't want to tell you—she has to tell you, as if her whole life depends on it. It feels honest, in the way a good cover should.

Playlist notes (Schnipper):

Spectrum, “True Love Will Find You in the End”
Daniel Johnston’s original is a paean to hope. A simple, sweet song performed on acoustic guitar with Johnston’s warble encouraging you to hold on. Spectrum, the post Spaceman 3 band from Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember, plays the song as proof that the love actually showed up. There’s no tension, only relief. I think the love Johnston was looking for was romantic, but the cover is so blissed out I think the kind Spectrum found might have been with drugs. Whatever works.

Ramona Lisa, “The Orchids”
The existence of Psychic TV’s “The Orchids” is a bit of an anomaly. A lush folk song from the post-Throbbing Gristle group, it’s a bit like if Francis Bacon painted one perfect, lovely, smiling portrait everyone loved and then went back to the nightmare stuff. “The Orchids” has been covered more than once—Califone’s take is quite good—but I like Ramona Lisa (aka Caroline Polachek)’s version best. It’s sweet, but adds a touch of eeriness for good measure. A good blueprint for the music she herself was soon to make.

Diana and Blondie with the Movers, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”
This barnstorming American rock classic apparently instantly transcended borderlines, as proven by this South African cover. I love that it was recorded in 1971, the same year as the original, like it was so good they needed to rush out their own version. The original is pretty raw, but the cover is heavily stripped down, with wobbly harmonizing and thrashing drums. It’s earnest and odd. Sounds like a bar band from a David Lynch movie.

Emmylou Harris, “Wrecking Ball”
This is one of those songs that belongs more to the person who covered it than the original artist. Emmylou Harris must have known that too, as she borrowed the Neil Young song’s name for her 1995 album title. This is one of the most astonishing folk rock songs ever recorded, in my opinion. Harris sounds powerfully vulnerable, like recording the song is just taking every ounce of strength she has to get through. Daniel Lanois, slide guitarist and occasional Brian Eno collaborator, produced the song and lends it a ghostly fragility. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.

Katrina Krimsky, “A Rainbow in Curved Air”
You typically don’t call classical compositions played by someone other than the original composer covers. But I like the idea. A Mozart cover band, coming soon to Carnegie Hall. But I think this Katrina Krimsky take on Terry Riley’s “A Rainbow in Curved Air” qualifies as a (quiet!) cover. The original is primarily played (by Riley) on an electric organ, where, here, Krimsky transposes the score for a piano. It softens the original’s fierceness but maintains its sense of wonder. If you, like me, want to hear this type of thing playing in your living room while you watch the dust particles do their thing, you can grab a copy of this album for cheap on Discogs now. I recommend you do.