Over the past two years, there has been a trend for taking indie/alternative rock songs and covering them for advertisements in a sincere piano/female vocal style. It all started when Taken By Trees covered "Sweet Child O'Mine" for a John Lewis advert, and since then we've seen The Calling, The Pixies and even The Smiths being used in such a way. Birdy has made a career out of it. Earlier this year, I joked that someone should take Therapy?'s "Screamager" and do a straight forward piano cover of the song. After all, how much emotion can be wrung out of the phrase "I've got nothing to do, but hang around and get screwed up on you?"
Well, it turns out that the gods of mischief went and enlisted Irish/UK trio I Am Not Lefthanded to go ahead and do just that. The cover removes the ubiquitous guitar riff that the song was built around and replaces it instead with exquisite strings. It's a brave cover version, and one that head and shoulders above most of the other piano/vocal covers of rock hits. I'm willing to wager £10 that it will be used in a high-profile advertisement campaign by the end of the year though.
"Screamager" is taken from the band's fan-funded debut album, "The Fire & the Sigh", which is out now.
If you're going to cover a song like Screamager then you have two choices. Either you do a straight cover (which is pointless because you're not going to do better thane the original) or you do something completely different with it. In choosing the latter course I Am Not Lefthanded have ended up with a song that sounds rather good in its own right.
ReplyDeleteIf it's not snapped up for an advertisement then perhaps some Fix Factor hopeful will end up doing an inferior version when the theme is "Songs by bands with a question mark in their name".