Sunday, August 30, 2015

Yo La Tengo cover 'Friday I'm in Love'


Update (08/30/15): The band performed a live version of their cover on CBS This Morning's Saturday Sessions.


Update (July 14th, 2015): And here's the video for it, via Pitchfork. (Thanks @virgonomiroku)

Pitchfork reports that Yo La Tengo will be covering 'Friday I'm in Love' on their upcoming album, 'Stuff Like That There', which will be released on Aug. 28th.

Helpful note to bands thinking about covering The Cure in the future, you do know that they have more than 4 songs, right? Look deep into the catalog. Tons of great songs to pick from. :)

Update (06/11/15): From Newsweek:

Ira Kaplan, who plays in the trio with his wife Georgia Hubley (drums, vocals) and James McNew (bass), called Newsweek to discuss Yo La Tengo's relationship with the songs, artists and spirals of influence that make up the new record.

Ira Kaplan: "Years ago, the year that The Onion wrote that article about us with the collapse at the club killing people, they asked us to perform at their Christmas party in New York. They started telling us the money they had available to pay us and we said the money is less important—what we really want is if you'll help us reenact that article. It took some convincing. The difference was we wanted to be killed instead of people in the audience. So they ended up getting very enthusiastic, setting up fake rigging on the stage and at a certain point the lights flickered and the equipment went off and all these fake speakers fell from the rafters and landed on us, killing us, and we were carried off on stretchers.

"But that night we did 'Friday I'm In Love,' and it seemed like a good party song and that was it. We didn't play it again until one day we were on a radio show in London and got asked to take audience requests, and one of them was for 'Friday I'm In Love,' which we didn't exactly remember—we had to kind of teach it to ourselves again...

"I loved when [The Cure] first started, those initial singles. Not quite 'Killing an Arab' as much as 'Boys Don't Cry' and 'Jumping Someone Else's Train.' I loved those songs and I loved the Three Imaginary Boys record. I kind of quickly stopped listening to them when the singles got less poppy. When the singles got poppy again, I became a fan of all those songs." (Thanks Dave)

I don't like, or agree with, Ira Kaplan. :)

25 comments:

  1. More than 4? I got Just Like Heaven, Lovesong, Friday I'm In Love...what're the other 2? ;)

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  2. So my favorite band ever is covering my other favorite band ever. Nice! Shame about the song choice though.

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    1. And who woulda thought that I'd find out about a new Yo La album from COF?! Not me.

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  3. http://www.kpopstarz.com/articles/207795/20150603/the-cure-new-album.htm

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    1. http://craigjparker.blogspot.com/2015/04/please-stop-sending-these.html

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    2. Thanks, Randy. I really wanna punch that dumb website. :)

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  4. We just have to accept, that there is a rooster of 8 songs in particular, from the Cure's back catalogue, that pretty much everyone all over the world, even the most casual fan, (Or non-fan), of the band know's or recognizes. And those are: Boys don't cry, The Lovecats, Inbetween days, Close to me, Just like heaven, Lullaby, Lovesong and Friday I'm in love. Casual fans, at least, will of course also know: A forest, Pictures of you and Why can't I be you? as well. Those songs are the Cures evergreens, even though they certainly have made far better ones through their long career. They are, for most people, the template for the typical cure-sound.

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  5. I imagine if a known band were to cover A Short Term Effect or This Twilight Garden, Cure followers would be a little more pleasantly surprised.

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  7. I heard a recent interview with Robert smith.
    I was blown away with this guys insight!
    He said that he was aware that covering a cure tune was mostly difficult due to his vocals.
    It is hard for another singer to express the emotional content like Robert smith.
    No one can really sing like he can for many reasons, mainly, because of his intense emotional intelligence.
    I am impressed that he himself realised this.
    If we indentity with a lyric of his, say the song a chain of flowers for instance,
    I'm sure that smith would understand that the covering vocalist is interpreting his poetry to fit their own expressions.
    But who can hit that high note at the end when he says "I feel solo alone" ?
    There's a crack in his voice there.
    His tonal intensity can change into a forceful over articulation in songs such as never enough or one hundred years.
    It's nasal its manic depressive and sometimes sleep deprived. He's using his head voice and sinuses through his eyes, as if crying.
    His falsetto in songs such as dressing up and Charlotte sometimes, parts of In Orange, amazing...
    I've always favored the exhausted breathless sexiness of a young thirty year old smiths delivery of fascination st. Going into funny and minor territories almost comically like he was much older than thirty. This is different from his perpetual youth silvery joy in songs such as just like haven, where he is so innocent that he sounds like a little kid:)

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  8. No. I did not mean to write the word funny.
    Not funny.
    Funky.
    I meant funky.
    Funky.

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  9. Another point on the off beat sophistication of minor moments in cure music such as fascination st and his all over the place vocal interpretation of the melody, I will add, this smith is very much a lyrical melododist.
    He seems very right handed and left brained. Very lyric and linguistic. The technicalities of writing and performing are not so interesting as to be showcased, for they are a given to his type of musicianship.
    He is trying to say something more personal and pinpointed unique to the song than say, jazz usually states.
    Some jazz, is more abstract. It is background music and allows for the listener to think while hearing it. It does not captivate the listers attention.
    As jazz as smith gets, these blue deviations from immaculate counterpoint and punctuation are more sophisticated than I usually hear in pop or goth music.
    Bands like U2 and joy division have a similar philosophy in structure to cure songs in that they have the main melody carried in the bass line. The ryhthm sections are so lyric in some cure songs that the drums carry as prosey a prom as a non tympani instrument. From pornography to the top and in examples like a Japanese dream , we hear the most lyric rhythm section and drum voice in rock and roll.
    So, melodic bass and drum lines with the treble clef often in fountains and rainbow arc shapes in complimenting and opposing (arpeggios, ect.) the harder structure beneath, the fills, the vocal work, the harmonies....
    There are colors and swirls in his guitar work. He from plays muddy as opposed to clean and employes heavy wah, cry baby wah wah pedals. I think Porl Thompson is an excellent choice for a lot of this.
    Anyway, even smiths shirts tend to have spotted floral and abstract circular spiral and calico swirly designs on them. His hair is round and non geometrical. He seems to have ocd ?
    His rythem section structures frame the freely grinding lilts, rollar coasters and highly dramatic tinkles and sparks which spring highest in the upper dynamics of the interweaving mix able tracks.

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  10. The Cure should learn from Yo La Tengo how to keep making great albums...

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  11. Read this link ;) http://www.newsweek.com/inside-yo-la-tengos-eclectic-covers-heavy-new-album-339711?utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=twitterfeed

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  12. While it's often covered, at least they put a different spin on it. Without the video I wouldn't understand why the vocals have so little emotion.
    I find the Video/vocals combined interesting, but don't care for the vocals on their own. This song needs energy and emotion. IMHO.

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  13. " I kind of quickly stopped listening to them when the singles got less poppy. When the singles got poppy again, I became a fan of all those songs" - Yet when you cover one you removed the pop from it? weird.

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  14. Inoffensive for sure, but a little bland. Not a fan of 99% of the Cure covers I hear...

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  15. Automatic's cover of Friday on _Fictional_ is pretty great.

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  16. They should lay off the Valium.

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