Run For Cover is a weekly music column comparing cover songs to the original version. Prepare for a major bending of rules as we hear musicians throw around genres, tempos, style, and intent. Whether they’re picking up another’s song out of respect or boredom, the results have impressed us.
One of the most important modern female singers and art rockers in general stopped through Boston yesterday to blow away her previous hometown back in her college days. St. Vincent, the stage name of Annie Clark, began music at a young age before heading to Berklee to continue the pursuit. It wasn’t long before she dropped off to start touring, leading up to her extravagant performance at the House of Blues last night.
Getting the courage to start playing publicly is the hard part. If it weren’t for such prominent musical influences being around, who knows how long it would have taken before Clark shared her talent with the world.
Illinois punk rock band Big Black was only around for six years, but they put a dent in the 80s like none other. With the great Steve Albini as their singer, guitarist, and founder, the group crafted some of the abrasive, stark rock we hold up high in history today. Their use of a drum machine and aggressive guitar playing was the precursor to industrial rock.
That’s right. Trent Reznor would be nothing without Albini.
With just two studio LPs—Atomizer (1986) and Songs About Fucking (1987)—Big Black set out to cover murder, rape, anarchism, and more to shun the mainstream industry. They were one of several bands at the time to do everything themselves. Booking tours, making merch, recording records – screw promoters; they could do it.
In May of 2011, Michael Azerrad’s book Our Band Could Be Your Life turned ten. The book, about the DIY culture upheld by bands of the 80s, talks in depth about everyone from Minutemen and Black Flag to Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth. They weren’t mainstream popular at the time, but all of these are hailed today for their influential status on just about every band, St. Vincent being one of them.
To celebrate the anniversary, current bands who encompass the spirit of the DIY style were asked to cover the bands in the book. Songs could be performed traditionally or reinvented as long as they didn’t exceed their 15 minutes of stage time. Dan Deacon covered the Butthole Surfers, tUnE-yArDs covered Sonic Youth, and Titus Andronicus covered The Replacements.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, St. Vincent covered Big Black.
Her rendition of “Kerosene” stayed true to the band’s sound, providing a sneak peak at the middle finger-flipping, vein-bursting, fuck off punk hiding beneath her dainty 115-pound shell. The noise screeched out as she demonic-ly sang the song’s lines about burning things as a result of suburban boredom. 2012’s “Krokodil” and “Grot” hadn’t been released, and the type of covers Clark was tossing out were The Beatles’ “Dig A Pony” and Nico/Jackson Browne’s “These Days”, so seeing her perform a shrill seven-minute song and scratching her guitar neck against the microphone was unforeseen.
This video shows a girl shocking a crowd wrongly prepared for a folk rock take on a thundering classic. Hell, as soon as it ends, she bails, too pent up with fury to stick around for cleanup. Now it’s easy to tell the joke was on the crowd. Annie Clark isn’t just the pretty sunrise and sunset that you draw with crayons; she’s the entire weather gamut, and you have to be prepared for that.