Move Closer

Thanks largely to their prolific way with B-sides and recent lack of associated quality control, there are a few songs in The Bluetones' discography that are painful on repeat listens. Only their Phyllis Nelson cover "Move Closer" is painful the first time. There's not much wrong with such a cover in theory - it could easily have turned out at least as well as "Woman In Love", with for my money much better starting material. The final results, though, are as despicable as they are inexplicable.

The basic crimes are threefold:

• Inferior, watery rendition of original backing track.
• Copius fake crowd noises. Yikes.
• Artificially slowed down, Barry White impression vocals.

Actually, you might as well just take the last one. They're that mind-bogglingly, skin-crawlingly horrible. I don't even want to make it through the whole song for the purposes of this entry. If it's meant to be funny, it fails hugely on that level too. It fails on any level ever.



YouTube: Original

Woman In Love

The opening two seconds of this cover from the "After Hours" single seems to say a lot. The descending tinkling chimes introduction is a trick much beloved of overblown ballads and a sound that has surely rarely appeared on any record with pretence of credibility. It also isn't present in the Barbra Streisand original.
And indeed this isn't the common thing of an indie band taking a pop record, stripping it down and drawing out the inherant serious emotion that surely no one would have realised was there all along (suuure). But improbably, nor does it exactly turn out to be a larger than life pisstake, exaggerated to silliness. No, for good or bad it's just like the original, but a smidgeon more camp.

YouTube: Original

I'm Over And I Know It

After reading about The Bluetones covering the theme from '80s TV show Minder at around the same time as this radio session track was recorded, I somehow had it in my head that "I'm Over And I Know It" and the Minder theme were one and the same. Apparently not - it's in fact a cover of a song by sometime tour support The Webb Brothers. So my impressions of this song were affected by associating it with a TV show that I've never seen and didn't actually have anything to do with it.

The Bluetones' version seems to be pretty faithful to the original (at least as far as a 30 second clip on Amazon can prove...) a sort of boozy, mock-celebratory spiral of despair that covers up the tears with handclaps and 'do-do-do's. It feels more like a tribute to a band that they're fans of than something that they had their own unique spin on to offer, although it's not hard to see it fitting in with the likes of "Never Going Nowhere" in their recent tendency towards double meanings and commenting on their own outsider position. It's a well done enough song to have me at least interested in hearing the full original if I can find it.

Beat On The Brat

It's only looking through The Bluetones' songs trying to decide what to right about next that I realise just how many covers they've done as B-sides throughout their career. Mainly in the Science & Nature/The Singles/Luxembourg eras, which says something about the demands of releasing two CD versions of each single with B-sides for each, I suppose.

It's quite hard not to read this Ramones cover from the "Fast Boy"/"Liquid Lips" single as a 'look, we can rock too!' statement, although it was probably born out of genuine appreciation too. It's a much less minimalist interpretation than the original, that hypnotically sparse bass buried beneath lots of guitar fuzz and drums pushed forward. What Mark lacks in cool he just about makes up for in enthusiasm, and the overall impression is now more 'beat' and a lot less 'brat'. Then there's the one inspired affectation which makes it stand out from those many B-side covers that I mentioned. It's a little lyric change - 'beat on the brat with a baseball bat' to 'beat on the brat with a cricket bat' that pokes fun at themselves but sounds no less appropriate at the same time.

mp3: Beat On The Brat the Bluetones version.
YouTube: Beat On The Brat the original.Visuals irrelevant.