The Big Bright – I Slept Thru the 80s and Winterpills – Echolalia

I hated cover songs with a passion until one day a band calling themselves Big Bright released an EP titled I Slept Thru the 80s and a cartoon bubble with a question mark began hovering above me. They didn’t just cover the songs, you see, they altered them. They created a whole new musical atmosphere. They smoothed out rough edges of a whole string of 80s Pop and Powerpop tunes by the likes of The Bangles (“Walk Like an Egyptian”). INXS (“Don’t Change”), Ray Davies (“I Go To Sleep”), and Echo & The Bunnymen (“Ocean Rain”), leaving only the bare core of the original upon which to rebuild. The songs are soft, melodic and floating and are, in fact, new songs, thanks to arrangement. The band calls the songs “New Wave Nocturnes” and they are a window to what covers can be and, to myself, are supposed to be. Something exciting, something new. A listen to this video, recorded live in what looks like a hallway, should clarify.

Recently, I have become a slave to arrangement when it is done well, and between The Big Bright and Winterpills, I am in pig heaven. Oh, I never would have even listened to Big Bright but for the inclusion of Ollabelle’s Fiona McBain and Glenn Patscha in the group (the bonus was the discovery of Liz Tormes, listed on the band’s website as a “neo-noir singer/songwriter,” a term I have embraced after hearing her own music). Patscha, in fact, brought the band to my attention and I am sure I tried to beg off but he insisted, more than likely asking me just to give it a chance. I’m sure I told him I hated covers. I’m sure he scoffed. You can change that to “hated.” The Big Bright indeed struck a note.

The thing is, I did and discovered another band sleeping through not the eighties but through each song they chose to record. Not sleep Z-z-z-z. But sleep wow! The production and the arrangements and the performance was right up there with The Big Bright, but the selections….. I knew a few of the songs, having been a diehard Nick Drake, XTC, and Jules Shear fan for decades, but the others! The Go-Betweens, Matthew Sweet (who I knew because of Howie Wahlen, but not well), Lisa Germano— even Beck, who I had tossed aside as a poser (okay, I may have missed on him, but…). Man, the album is loaded with exceptional arrangements of songs I had on the whole refused to hear— all but the cover of The Beatles “Cry Baby Cry,” which had worn itself thin from overplay, and Nick Drake’s “Time of No Reply” (Drake and I have been friends in an artist/fan sense since this cute Australian girl happened through Eugene one day in mid-’72 and shared her love of his music and, well, she was really cute and I had to admit that Drake was pretty damn good and, truth be told, it wasn’t long before I was as big a fan as was she).

God, life was so much easier when I could toss aside songs solely on the basis of being covers. Beatles? Bah! Stones? Pfft! Zepp? Argh! Since burying myself in these two albums, though, my music has changed— at least, my attitude toward some of it.

This does not mean I am totally sold on covers. Doing covers for the sake of it is, as far as I’m concerned, a lazy way out. Still, if a musician were to do something creative, say what The Big Bright and Winterpills have done, I would not be against it. I mean, did you know that at one time, big bands listed arrangers alongside composers on records? That is how important they were. We have somehow gotten away from that. To the point that Nazareth could cover Felice & Boudleaux Bryant’s “Love Hurts” and listing it as “traditional— arranged Nazareth”) and The Eagles could do a cover of Steve Young’s superb “Seven Bridges Road” and not give credit to Ian Matthews, whose arrangement they used, note for note.

But hey, here’s a bonus, if you are curious at all. A listing of songs from both albums by original artist. You think you don’t like some of these? Wait till you hear the covers.

THE BIG BRIGHT/I Slept Thru the 80s

INXS— “Don’t Change”

Duran Duran— “The Chauffeur”

The Cure— “Just Like Heaven”

The Bangles— “Walk Like an Egyptian”

Echo & The Bunnymen— “Ocean Rain”

Robert Palmer— “Johnny & Mary”

Depeche Mode— “Never Let Me Down Again”

Tears For Fears— “Change”

Yazoo— “Only You”

Alan Parsons— “Eye In the Sky”

Ray Davies— “I Go To Sleep”

WINTERPILLS/Echololia

Sharon Ven Etten— “One Day”

Nick Drake— “Time of No Reply”

Lisa Germano— “From a Shell”

Jules Shear— “Open Your Eyes”

Buddy Holly— “Learning the Game”

Matthew Sweet— “We’re the Same”

The Go-Betweens— “Bye Bye Pride”

Damien Jurado— “Museum of Flight”

XTC— “Train Running Low on Soul Coal”

Mark Mulcahy— “A World Away From Thos Ine”

Beck— “The Wolf Is On the Hill”

The Beatles— “Cry Baby Cry”

Added bonus! The liner notes for Echolalia run down, track by track, the songs recorded for the album— the reasons for their inclusion, behind the scenes notes, etc. As an example, here is what Philip Price had to say regarding XTC’s “Train Running Low on Soul Coal” (a personal favorite):

“Andy Partridge, lyrically sandblasting his way through the aching wall of rage that must have been himself, age 30-ish, feeling like a has-been, used and abused by the record industry, by his own mind— so eloquent and sad and enraged and bizarre. A perfect B-side and the last track on 1984’s The Big Express, the original arrangement is one of the more aggressive and dissonant songs the band ever did, full of pounding Linn drums and twin electric guitars bashing against each other in chordal disarray. Our approach was to go straight to the loneliness at the heart of the song, strip it all the way back, slow it down and focus on the lyrics. This is a very personal song about failure, about seeing one’s youth and vitality in the rear-view mirror— and you could argue 30 is way too young to feel that way, but you’d be lying if you said you never had, even as a teenager.”

Liner notes. A subject for another time. They never seem to run out.