There Goes the Fear, a UK/US Music Web site | Live UK gigs, news, and events

(SXSW 2015 flavoured!) Video of the Moment #1755 (and more!): Bad Veins

Bad Veins came out of Cincinnati native Benjamin Davis’ solo bedroom project, then becoming an engaging live act with fellow founding member Sebastien Schultz on drums. After high-profile support slots for big names like TGTF favourites Two Door Cinema Club and We Were Promised Jetpacks, in 2013 Schultz called it quits, with Jake Bonta replacing him on the skins.

‘The Mess We Made’ was Bad Veins’ 2013 album that includes Schultz’s drumming, and now in 2 weeks (just in time for SXSW 2015!), Bad Veins 2.0 will be releasing ‘The Mess Remade’, a rerecorded, remastered, redone rehash if you will of the album from 2 years ago. An addition to the new LP not previously available on the earlier album is a cover of the Muppets’ ‘Rainbow Connection’, which appropriately has a Davis-like muppet playing the guitar and singing to a dejected, bespectacled Bonta. Even Irene, Bad Veins’ stalwart reel-to-reel tape deck companion, is also lovingly brought to puppet life for this promo. Watch it below. Also included below is the redone cut of fan favourite ‘Kindness’.

Live Gig Video: First Aid Kit perform ‘Walk Afraid’ R.E.M. cover with Peter Buck

For the soundtrack to the Reese Witherspoon film drama Wild released last autumn First Aid Kit recorded a breathtaking cover of R.E.M.’s ‘Walk Unafraid’. While we knew that they sisters Soderberg filmed a promo video for their version of the song, we didn’t know that during the down time of the making of the video, someone had the good idea to film this live acoustic performance of the sisters singing the song while R.E.M.’s own Peter Buck played backing guitar. You can watch both the live performance and the forest atmospheric promo video for the song below.

TGTF’s past coverage on First Aid Kit is here.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjYjuAaBEY[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDOIq21o40E[/youtube]

(Holiday!) MP3 of the Day #865: Verses

Brighton rock band Verses have recorded a cover version of Wizzard’s ’70s holiday hit ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’. And they want you to have it for free! How nice are they?

Listen to the cover and grab it for your very own below.

MP3 of the Day #859: Fenech-Soler

Hmm. I would like to think it was I who gave electropop stalwarts Fenech-Soler *the* nudge in the right direction, prompting them to record this cover of Prince’s ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’. When I chatted with them in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in April before their Glasslands show there, we talked about the possibility of them recording a cover, and I joked to them their benchmark was Glass Animals‘ peerless cover of Kanye West’s ‘Love Lockdown’. This is a suitable, sexy rival.

Listen to the track below. Like it? You can grab it for free courtesy of Mixmag.

Album Review (on cassette!): PINS – Come Back EP

In an ever-more-likely attempt at world domination, PINS demonstrate their impeccable taste, and perhaps betray more than a little of their idolatry, with the advent of their ‘Come Back’ EP, released on cassette to coincide with Cassette Store Day on 27th September. Gadzooks – what next? Wax Cylinder Week? Floppy Disk Fortnight?

Each of the three tracks is a cover – ‘Come Back’ is by The Belles, ‘I’m Leaving You’ by Char Vinnedge and Mary Gallagher, and ‘You Don’t Love Me’ by bluesman Willie Cobbs, which is perhaps the most instantly recognisable song – think Dawn Penn’s skanking reggae version with added “na na na”s, or perhaps, for the younger generation, Beyoncé’s brief poptastic live cover. Whichever way you cut it though, PINS deliver the definitive garage-rock version here.

More intriguing still is the origins of the title track. The Belles are a little-known Miami group from the early ‘60s, with nary an album to their name. How they can come up with something as spanking as ‘Come Back’ and thereafter sink into obscurity is unknown, and something of a shame. They did a cover of Them’s ‘Gloria’, changing the title to ‘Melvin’, with tongue-in-cheek consequences, but that’s about all we know about them. Certainly deserving of a modest revival courtesy of PINS. Cleverly, the original of ‘Come Back’ is 2 minutes, 12 seconds long; the cover is exactly the same length. Spooky coincidence or admirable attention to detail? You decide.

‘Come Back’ will be released on cassette in a limited run of 100 for Cassette Store Day on Saturday, the 27th of September, so get eBaying for those vintage Walkmans right away.

Video of the Moment #1593 (and more!): Franz Ferdinand

Scottish rock stalwarts Franz Ferdinand now have a promo video for ‘Stand on the Horizon’, their next single off of ‘Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action’, their fourth album released in 2013. According to the press sheet, the song was inspired by frontman Alex Kapranos’ fond memories of growing up in the North East, specifically Sunderland. I can’t explain why the video ends on the beach, after a gold lame-suited version of the group has alighted for the coast with their mostly aged pub fanbase, but who said videos had to make sense? Watch it below.

But wait! There’s “more” in the title of this post, and there is. Frankie and the Heartstrings – a Sunderland band, of course – have covered the single and you can hear their cover below. (Seriously, how appropriate or what?)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iUfn5vJI7Q[/youtube]