Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Four

One more cover version Sunday mix then I'll leave it alone for a while. I've been finding cover versions in all sorts of places since I started the first mix four weeks ago, songs springing to mind at random moments. Most of the ones I've chosen do something with the source material, take it somewhere else emotionally or stylistically. Some rip the original to shreds, some pay their respects but still tear it up. Some nod their head to their influences or pay something back. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Four

• Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End
• Spiritualized: Any Way That You Want Me
• The Kills: Pale Blue Eyes
• One Dove: Jolene
• Galaxie 500: Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste
• John Cale: All My Friends
• Monkey Mafia: As Long As I Can See The Light
• Raz and Afla: Windowlicker

Sonic Boom formed Spectrum after Spacemen 3 split up and his cover of Daniel Johnson's True Love Will Find You In The End is a gorgeous, angelic take on the song. Released in 1992 as a single and later included in two versions on a Sonic Boom/ Spectrum compilation.

Two years earlier Jason Pierce/ J Spaceman flew the Spacemen 3 coop first, releasing the first Spiritualized single, a cover of The Troggs 1966 single. Jason doesn't radically alter it but he makes it a Spiritualized song all the same. 

The Kills cover of The Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes is gloriously ragged and fuzzed up, the guitar stuttering and ripping a hole in the speaker while Alison gives deadpan vocals. It was a B-side to their 2012 The Last Goodbye single.

One Dove's dubbed out, trippy reggae cover of Dolly Parton is a blast, Dot's beautifully off key vocals perfect for the band's blissed out but slightly on edge comedown re-imagining of the song. It came out as one of the B-sides to the 1993 single release of Why Don't You Take Me.

Galaxie 500 recorded several fantastic covers- their take on New Order's Ceremony may be the best NO cover ever recorded. Their cover of Jonathan Richman's Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste is superb, Jonathan's ninety second original stretched to to seven minutes, a thrilling Galaxie performance, the rumble of drums and bass matched by Dean's trebly, overdriven guitar. They only existed for four years, 1987 to 1991, but what a great band they were. 

John Cale covered LCD Soundsystem's All My Friends for LCD's own release of the single back in 2007- it came out as the B-side on 7" along with a sister 7" that had  Franz Ferdinand cover of the same song. Cale's version, piano, clipped krautrock guitars and his lived in, baritone voice give James Murphy's song a new dimension- when Cale sings, 'where are your friends tonight?', it conjures all sorts of imagery. 

Monkey Mafia's cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's was a 1998 single, a late 90s revisiting of a 1970 song, a call out to the weary travelers and wanderers, a song about going home. Pre- millenial tension?

Raz and Afla's cover of Aphex Twin's Windowlicker came out this year, a fantastic synths and percussion Afro- electronic floor filler- well, I can imagine some floors that it might fill.