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seedarklyxeroWelcome to SeeDarkly Sunday DisCOVERies:
a weekly exploration of goth, industrial, & dark alternative cover songs!
First time here? Click here for details from first entry.
My first intent for this week was to come up with something relevant to the new season of Stranger Things. I mean, they have had a consistently amazing soundtrack, but looking back at the previous seasons, the songs they choose have had an underwhelming amount of quality covers. I've actually already featured a couple: here and here (both original songs featured in the show's second season.) And there may be some track in season three with a worthy revision to focus on...
But then this beastly industrial remake of a popular decade-old indie hit surfaced this past week! What else could I do?:
3Teeth – Pumped Up Kicks (Foster the People)
Foster the People released their debut single, Pumped Up Kicks, in September 2010. It was then included on their self titled EP in January 2011 and their debut album, Torches, that May. The song explores the issues of mental illness and gun violence in high schools. In 2017, songwriter and frontman Mark Foster said in one interview, "That song was written from a place of wanting us to do something about gun violence, wanting legislation to be passed that can limit our resources because it feels like these mass shootings are becoming common now." He continued that it predicted "that it was going to get worse before it got better."
The song became a hit for the band, but also controversial because too often the lyrics were misinterpreted as a glorification of gun violence, not a warning. Radio stations opted to remove the track from active airplay following school shootings (Sandy Hook, et.al.) and the band themselves have refused to play it at some concerts following the horrific events of the 2017 Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas.
The song is a multi-platinum success, standing as their only top ten hit and their only song to rank number one on the alternative charts. In less than a decade the song has been covered over forty times, but not anywhere where near as darkly as it has now.
The industrial band 3Teeth released the video for their version of Pumped Up Kicks just a week before the July 5 release of their third studio album, MetaWar. The video is basic black and white surveillance of someone cleaning and assembling his stockpile of guns, interwoven with POV helmet-cam footage of a militant police force raiding a home and taking what appears to be a child of color into custody.
Frontman Alexis Mincolla talked a little about their first ever cover in a recent interview, “Industrial bands have a long history of subverting popular culture songs. From songs like Revolting Cocks’ version Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? or Laibach’s Sympathy for the Devil. We’ve just always been a fan of this sort of thing and felt it would be a good time to take an iconic song of the late 2000’s and give it some unexpected 2019 industrial darkness, which in the end seemed all too fitting considering the song is about a school shooter.” Adding to the context, the track is the denouement of an album that seems to have a very pointed message, as Mincolla states in another interview: “I just wanted to write stuff that reflected the whole insane, absurdist political theater and wrap it all up in this nihilistic approach of bringing it all to an end. There’s something really rewarding about creating this funhouse mirror that we’re holding up to things like the military-industrial complex. You warp it in this sardonic way and reflect it back at people – it’s like sucking the poison out of the mass-production society and then spitting it back in its own fucking face.”
Where the original has that sense of ironic hipster pop defusing the message, 3Teeth make no such pretense with a dark and driven drone of a dance rhythm, establishing a feeling of malice, gradually elevating the presence of danger, screaming "RUN!" repetitively behind the final choral lyrics. They make it clear that this song is an unquestionable and dire threat to be taken seriously.:
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
Second Sunday Slowly, moving from teeth that opened fire to claws that burn deep with this sultry downtempo remake of an eighties soft rock song by an iconic "boss."
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 reply below, but all replies are screened for spam prevention.
(And if, after 4 years and 219 weekly entries, you find this blog of any value, please click over to my profile and find out how you can leave us a tip if you like.)
Thanks for reading and keep dancing in darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Jul 30 - Gaytron – Tora Tora [Tora!] (Depeche Mode)
Jun 23 - Blind Delon w/ HIV+ – Almost A Kiss (Throbbing Gristle)
Jun 16 - Erasure – Supernature (Cerrone)
Jun 09 - Xiu Xiu – Falling (Julee Cruise)
Jun 02 - Bones UK – I'm Afraid of Americans (David Bowie)
. 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.
My first intent for this week was to come up with something relevant to the new season of Stranger Things. I mean, they have had a consistently amazing soundtrack, but looking back at the previous seasons, the songs they choose have had an underwhelming amount of quality covers. I've actually already featured a couple: here and here (both original songs featured in the show's second season.) And there may be some track in season three with a worthy revision to focus on...
But then this beastly industrial remake of a popular decade-old indie hit surfaced this past week! What else could I do?:
3Teeth – Pumped Up Kicks (Foster the People)
Foster the People released their debut single, Pumped Up Kicks, in September 2010. It was then included on their self titled EP in January 2011 and their debut album, Torches, that May. The song explores the issues of mental illness and gun violence in high schools. In 2017, songwriter and frontman Mark Foster said in one interview, "That song was written from a place of wanting us to do something about gun violence, wanting legislation to be passed that can limit our resources because it feels like these mass shootings are becoming common now." He continued that it predicted "that it was going to get worse before it got better."
The song became a hit for the band, but also controversial because too often the lyrics were misinterpreted as a glorification of gun violence, not a warning. Radio stations opted to remove the track from active airplay following school shootings (Sandy Hook, et.al.) and the band themselves have refused to play it at some concerts following the horrific events of the 2017 Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas.
The song is a multi-platinum success, standing as their only top ten hit and their only song to rank number one on the alternative charts. In less than a decade the song has been covered over forty times, but not anywhere where near as darkly as it has now.
The industrial band 3Teeth released the video for their version of Pumped Up Kicks just a week before the July 5 release of their third studio album, MetaWar. The video is basic black and white surveillance of someone cleaning and assembling his stockpile of guns, interwoven with POV helmet-cam footage of a militant police force raiding a home and taking what appears to be a child of color into custody.
Frontman Alexis Mincolla talked a little about their first ever cover in a recent interview, “Industrial bands have a long history of subverting popular culture songs. From songs like Revolting Cocks’ version Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? or Laibach’s Sympathy for the Devil. We’ve just always been a fan of this sort of thing and felt it would be a good time to take an iconic song of the late 2000’s and give it some unexpected 2019 industrial darkness, which in the end seemed all too fitting considering the song is about a school shooter.” Adding to the context, the track is the denouement of an album that seems to have a very pointed message, as Mincolla states in another interview: “I just wanted to write stuff that reflected the whole insane, absurdist political theater and wrap it all up in this nihilistic approach of bringing it all to an end. There’s something really rewarding about creating this funhouse mirror that we’re holding up to things like the military-industrial complex. You warp it in this sardonic way and reflect it back at people – it’s like sucking the poison out of the mass-production society and then spitting it back in its own fucking face.”
Where the original has that sense of ironic hipster pop defusing the message, 3Teeth make no such pretense with a dark and driven drone of a dance rhythm, establishing a feeling of malice, gradually elevating the presence of danger, screaming "RUN!" repetitively behind the final choral lyrics. They make it clear that this song is an unquestionable and dire threat to be taken seriously.:
The Cover:
The Original:
Next week:
Second Sunday Slowly, moving from teeth that opened fire to claws that burn deep with this sultry downtempo remake of an eighties soft rock song by an iconic "boss."
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 reply below, but all replies are screened for spam prevention.
(And if, after 4 years and 219 weekly entries, you find this blog of any value, please click over to my profile and find out how you can leave us a tip if you like.)
Thanks for reading and keep dancing in darkness,
-Xero
Previous DisCOVERies
Jul 30 - Gaytron – Tora Tora [Tora!] (Depeche Mode)
Jun 23 - Blind Delon w/ HIV+ – Almost A Kiss (Throbbing Gristle)
Jun 16 - Erasure – Supernature (Cerrone)
Jun 09 - Xiu Xiu – Falling (Julee Cruise)
Jun 02 - Bones UK – I'm Afraid of Americans (David Bowie)
. Directory of All Previous DisCOVERies .
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-07 08:50 pm (UTC)