I Don’t Know What’s Good For Me

The Futureheads “Hounds Of Love” – My ex-boyfriend strong-armed me into becoming at least a mild Kate Bush fan over the course of our relationship; he made a point of buying me Hounds Of Love after about a month and a half of dating. He told me to pay particular attention to “The Ninth Wave,” the bizarre mini-narrative-album that makes up the disc’s second half, but I never could get into it at all; I vastly preferred the skewed pop of the first five tracks, especially “Hounds Of Love” itself, and now The Futureheads have gone and re-made it into the song I always wanted it to be. That “Oh oh oh” hook sounded great surrounded by Bush’s oh-so-80s drum patterns, but it sounds even better when snuggled into a backing track that sounds like a bizarre fusion of The Proclaimers and The Jam. (The Futureheads are this week’s Band Of The Century in the UK press, or so I gather. Their album is readily available from Amazon UK, and I thank my friend Stuart for the tip-off to this track.)

The Twilight Singers “Hey Ya! (Live In Rome)” – “By God!” I hear you saying. “An alternative rock band covering ‘Hey Ya’? That’s soooo December 2003! Fluxblog is losing its edge, to the kids etc. etc.” Well, at least one Fluxblog All-Star needed to peddle you something tragically un-cool or out of date in order to make the others look even hotter, and I suppose the task should fall to me. Greg Dulli’s version of this song is clumsy, and he rushes or fumbles more than a couple of the hooks, but there’s just something about hearing him cut loose with the full throat-shredding “HEEEEY YAAAAAAAAAA” that’s actually managed to at least temporarily obliterate the original in my mind. Maybe it’s just Dulli’s well-documented enthusiasm for cover songs that sells it for me — I’ve been thinking a lot about covers lately, in ways both profound and ridiculous, and The Afghan Whigs & Twilight Singers’ fetish for playing as many covers as possible at any given time is immensely appealling to me right now. (The Twilight Singers covers album, She Loves You, is released Aug. 24th, but “Hey Ya!” is not on it. The full concert this track is taken from is readily available on Soulseek.)