Black and Brown Blues Redux

Cover-songs have a tendency to be bad, but very occasionally a cover manages to either transcend the original or at least re-interpret it in a way that makes you listen to the song differently. David-Ivar Herman Düne a prolific recorder of covers, with a bunch posted on the Herman Düne website and on his Myspace page, and he leans towards the latter tendency, creating stripped down ukulele or guitar interpretations of songs that generally manage to bring out small moments of greatness.

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David-Ivar Herman Düne - Black and Brown Blues (Silver Jews)

This is the first song I ever posted to Popsheep over one year ago, and it remains one of my favourite Silver Jews covers, and Herman Düne songs for that matter. The simplicity of the ukulele strumming along with the fantastically weird pronunciation of certain words in place of David Berman's deadpan, often flat delivery, does a nice job of highlighting the craftsmanship behind the lyrics, which are some of my favourite of all time. I especially like the line: "Well, the water looks like jewellery when it's coming out the spout/and nothing could make me feel better than a wet kiss on the mouth."

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David-Ivar Herman Düne - These Arms of Mine (Otis Redding)

This is just a very simple, sincere interpretation of a classic song that I never really bothered to listen carefully to prior to hearing this version. The pretty straightforward, repetitive lyrics are actually kind of sweet without being totally maudlin, and Herman Dune does a good job of bringing out that quality in a way that a big budget, overproduced cover wouldn't be able to do.

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David-Ivar Herman Düne - It Was A Good Day (Ice Cube)

Okay, maybe this song verges a little close to parody, which I think is often less than good when white guys use the disconnect between their middle class folk stylings and that of urban hip hop culture as the basis of the comedy. That said, I think this cover was done partially out of love and not complete incomprehension, although I find it hard not to laugh at the thought of David Herman Düne carrying an AK-47 or writing a song with lyrics like "and my dick runs deep, so deep, so deep it puts her ass to sleep". Actually, I guess it's pretty hard to read this song as anything besides a parody, but I think Ice Cube deserves to be mocked a little bit, especially with the string of crap family movies he's been spewing out over the last few years.

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Elsewhere on the internets, be sure to check out the great Mojave 3 cover of Bob Dylan's "Girl From the North Country" at Chromewaves.

Also, be sure to check out the Sunset Rubdown sessions over at Daytrotter.

And, finally, P-Fork has a pretty good Destroyer interview up right now which I quite enjoyed reading.