Music Recommendations: slow covers

I’ve been listening to quiet, subdued music this week. I collect songs I can play to calm myself down, to relax, to shush my worrying mind. I’d be curious if a real life music therapist could do a better job, but they probably don’t go around recommending indie rock to their clients.

Here’s a song I’m overplaying this week: Lewis & Clarke‘s very chilled-out cover of The Cure‘s “Disintegration”:

(Compare with the original if inclined.)

Another cover I’ve been digging lately is Elbow doing Peter Gabriel‘s “Mercy Street”:

(Original here.)

I don’t usually like covers, but these are two of my favourite bands, and I think they’ve treated the songs well, putting in their own interpretation rather than just doing karaoke, which is all too common with covers. My opinion is that 95% of covers are complete crap and can only diminish the song, but that’s just me. I know some of you think covers are the shit and you’d rather listen to The Barenaked Ladies’ “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” than Bruce Cockburn’s original. Or you think that The Barenaked Ladies actually wrote that song, because you are 12. Gah, kids today.

I mentioned Elbow to a friend the other week who listened for a bit and then referred to them as something like “Coldplay Wannabes”, which is crap since Elbow’s been around far longer, so if anything Coldplay wanted to be them way back when. And in any case I think Grounds for Divorce is one of the best songs to come out of the past few years. There’s even an orchestral version.

Real life blogging will be returning eventually, honest, but people have been complaining about a lack of music recommendations so here are some.