When is a cover song better than the original? Only you can decide. This week: Sun Kil Moon takes on Modest Mouse’s “Ocean Breathes Salty.” MAGNET’s Edward Fairchild pulls the pin. Take cover!
In 2005, Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters) and Sun Kil Moon released Tiny Cities, an album of stripped-down, acoustic Modest Mouse covers, with the songs rearranged to the point of being barely recognizable. The new rhythms and calm timbre cast the songs in an entirely different light, forcing listeners to take their time and pay closer attention to the lyrics and what the song was actually saying. The album was critically polarizing upon its release, but probably only because it was taken too seriously. Four years later, it doesn’t feel like Kozelek was trying to prove something for himself, so much as he was unlocking and opening something about Modest Mouse.
The Cover:
The Original:
[metacafe]http://www.metacafe.com/watch/sy-18502745/modest_mouse_ocean_breathes_salty_official_music_video/[/metacafe] [poll id=”47″]
One reply on “Take Cover! Sun Kil Moon Vs. Modest Mouse”
You should only cover a song if you can bring something to the table that was there before. I love Mark Kozelek/House/Kil Moon, but on this song, he could have achieved the same effect by simple reading the lyrics.
Although the ‘atmosphere’ of the the early MM stuff can be distracting (AND GREAT), the lyrics are also subtly nested into the dissonant or often cacophonous clangs in such a perfect way that it is impossible to unsettle them to be left with merely one voice.
I believe Mark should have tried harder to move these songs to something else rather than just trying to put them into a singer/song writer format. Think Gillian Welch’s cover of Radiohead’s ‘Dark Star’.