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Welcome to SeeDarkly Sunday DisCOVERies:
a weekly exploration of goth, industrial, & dark alternative cover songs!
First time here? Click here for details from first entry.
Well several plans for what I wanted to feature this month have had to be delayed for various reasons, which has led to a lot of obscure picks for the month. This week is no exception though in truth, the original song really sounds like something we should have heard of long ago. Finding this track I feel something like the reverse of a Mandela Effect, where their very existence without your knowledge makes you question if reality may have been rewritten to include them or perhaps you've slipped into an alternate universe where they've always been more popular than you've known. (Honestly, with so many reasons to question reality these days this could be a small, if impossible to prove, confirmation there's been a breach in the walls that separate universes!):
Riviera F - Echo Beach (Martha and the Muffins)
Martha and the Muffins (aka M+M), a female fronted new wave band from Ontario, Canada, released Echo Beach in February 1980 as the first single from their 1979 debut album, Metro Music. Guitarist/songwriter Marc Gane said the song was inspired by his time daydreaming while working a job at a paint and wallpaper factory. He had envisioned an idyllic memory of Sunnyside Beach on Lake Ontario. The song, however, is far less specific than that, allowing the fictional "Echo Beach" to represent a symbol of escapism for those stuck in the grind of dull and tedious tasks. The name is also reference to the 1977 Ultravox track, Hiroshima Mon Amour, which itself is based on the 1959 French film of the same name.
The band rerecorded Echo Beach for its 30th Anniversary in 2010, this time a "darker and languid" version, less of a dance track and more of what they consider a "grown-up" approach to the song.
This is to date the band's only international hit, though they've managed a lasting and successful career in Canada to the present time.
Echo Beach has been surprisingly covered at least a half dozen times spread out over the decades with more of them done after the turn of the century.
One of the most recent covers is by a London-based electro-synth duo called Riviera F who included it on their 2010 self-released debut album, Another City Another Plan. They have noted as their inspiration bands like Talking Heads, Modern Talking, Kraftwerk, and Abba, but specific details about their inspiration for the cover aren't known. In fact, they seem far more obscure than M+M and either private about their current efforts or now inactive entirely.
If the original can be likened to the early works of The Cure with Debbie Harry style vocals, this cover seems a synthetic nod to both The Cure and The Cult in style with vocals akin to Ladytron. These are two surprisingly exceptional gems and welcome earworms coming to us through a wormhole from whatever universe they originated.:
The Cover:
The Original:
-Click here for the Darker Downtempo 30th Anniversary version-
Next week:
One of the features I planned for the month is still good to go as we return with a Fifth Sunday A La Mode! The Depeche Mode track covered this time comes to us from an uprising of nerds who probably look pretty good in selfies!
Feel free to tell me what you think about today's cover! Comments, suggestions, discussions, etc... welcome!
(You do NOT need a Dreamwidth account to comment, but all comments are screened for spam prevention.)
Explore the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Sep 16 - Project Pitchfork - In The Year 2525(Zager & Evans)
Sep 09 - Skold - Pale As Chalk (Leæther Strip)
Sep 02 - Bestial Mouths - Being Boiled (The Human League)
Aug 26 - 4X4: Suzi Quatro/J.G. Thirlwell/Soft Lighting/Norman Sane - Warm Leatherette (The Normal)
Aug 19 - Billy Idol - [I Forgot] To Be A [Your] Lover (William Bell)
Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies
a weekly exploration of goth, industrial, & dark alternative cover songs!
First time here? Click here for details from first entry.
Well several plans for what I wanted to feature this month have had to be delayed for various reasons, which has led to a lot of obscure picks for the month. This week is no exception though in truth, the original song really sounds like something we should have heard of long ago. Finding this track I feel something like the reverse of a Mandela Effect, where their very existence without your knowledge makes you question if reality may have been rewritten to include them or perhaps you've slipped into an alternate universe where they've always been more popular than you've known. (Honestly, with so many reasons to question reality these days this could be a small, if impossible to prove, confirmation there's been a breach in the walls that separate universes!):
Riviera F - Echo Beach (Martha and the Muffins)
Martha and the Muffins (aka M+M), a female fronted new wave band from Ontario, Canada, released Echo Beach in February 1980 as the first single from their 1979 debut album, Metro Music. Guitarist/songwriter Marc Gane said the song was inspired by his time daydreaming while working a job at a paint and wallpaper factory. He had envisioned an idyllic memory of Sunnyside Beach on Lake Ontario. The song, however, is far less specific than that, allowing the fictional "Echo Beach" to represent a symbol of escapism for those stuck in the grind of dull and tedious tasks. The name is also reference to the 1977 Ultravox track, Hiroshima Mon Amour, which itself is based on the 1959 French film of the same name.
The band rerecorded Echo Beach for its 30th Anniversary in 2010, this time a "darker and languid" version, less of a dance track and more of what they consider a "grown-up" approach to the song.
This is to date the band's only international hit, though they've managed a lasting and successful career in Canada to the present time.
Echo Beach has been surprisingly covered at least a half dozen times spread out over the decades with more of them done after the turn of the century.
One of the most recent covers is by a London-based electro-synth duo called Riviera F who included it on their 2010 self-released debut album, Another City Another Plan. They have noted as their inspiration bands like Talking Heads, Modern Talking, Kraftwerk, and Abba, but specific details about their inspiration for the cover aren't known. In fact, they seem far more obscure than M+M and either private about their current efforts or now inactive entirely.
If the original can be likened to the early works of The Cure with Debbie Harry style vocals, this cover seems a synthetic nod to both The Cure and The Cult in style with vocals akin to Ladytron. These are two surprisingly exceptional gems and welcome earworms coming to us through a wormhole from whatever universe they originated.:
The Cover:
The Original:
-Click here for the Darker Downtempo 30th Anniversary version-
Next week:
One of the features I planned for the month is still good to go as we return with a Fifth Sunday A La Mode! The Depeche Mode track covered this time comes to us from an uprising of nerds who probably look pretty good in selfies!
Feel free to tell me what you think about today's cover! Comments, suggestions, discussions, etc... welcome!
(You do NOT need a Dreamwidth account to comment, but all comments are screened for spam prevention.)
Explore the darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Sep 16 - Project Pitchfork - In The Year 2525(Zager & Evans)
Sep 09 - Skold - Pale As Chalk (Leæther Strip)
Sep 02 - Bestial Mouths - Being Boiled (The Human League)
Aug 26 - 4X4: Suzi Quatro/J.G. Thirlwell/Soft Lighting/Norman Sane - Warm Leatherette (The Normal)
Aug 19 - Billy Idol - [I Forgot] To Be A [Your] Lover (William Bell)
Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies