This Is Your Song For....August 14th, 2013: Smoke by Kacie Williams

She'd like to tell you what she knows about God...

Sorry for the delay.  To make up for it, here’s a pretty folk song about the impermanence of life from a Texan singer/songwriter.

This is from a live performance she gave at the English Teahouse in 2010.  On this recording, Kacie mentions that she was inspired to write this song after reading Ecclesiastes (she also shills for the EP she’s got on sale in the back; you don’t get this sort of thing on live albums from other acts), and that statement says a lot about who she is.  This is a very religious woman who chooses to witness her faith through her art, but doesn’t do it in the chest-thumping way some of these ‘Christian Pop’ acts do.  She makes her case, gives us her view of things, then lets us come to the conclusions we want to.

On the very brief bio she includes on the website for her new project, Neighbour, she mentions that her ‘heart home’ is Nashville.  I can certainly see a country influence in the song, but there’s an even stronger whiff of the sort of female driven neo-folk that was a big deal in the early 90‘s.  You can certainly see Ms. Williams fitting in on a Lilith Fair bill around that time.  But what I do like is that the pseudo-religiosity that drove much of Sarah MacLachlan’s stuff of that period is replaced with genuine piousness, which I think gives it a different texture, a slight ring of the genuine.

Apparently, Kacie Williams is touring with Neighbour (at least as of April of this year), still being true to herself and her DIY aesthetic.

No video for this song, so here's a video of her singing two songs....

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Six: Wait by Sarah Mclachlan

Look into her long, dark, befreckled, Canadian mirror...

And here we have someone who really benefited from the interest in female artists in the early 90's. After all, she was recording solo before the Tori Amoses and the Alanis Morrisettes and the Fiona Apples of this world, having two albums and an EP out before Little Earthquakes hit. That being said, an argument could be made that it was the success of Amos that prompted the album this song came from, Fumbling Toward Ecstacy, to become the big breakout hit that she was looking for.

Much like Billy Joel, I have something of a strange relationship with Mclachlan. I was aware of her previous two albums, Touch and Solace, as tracks from them received airplay on WDRE before that august alt-rock station gave up the ghost. I didn't care for those early tracks, but the lead single from Fumbling Toward Ecsctacy, 'Possession,' did grab me enough for me to buy this album. Sometime after Mirrorball, however, I began to drift away--probably because I felt that Mclachlan was one of those musicians who found her niche and comfortably sat within it, never venturing out of it and stretching herself. Hell, I wonder at times if she'll be lauded in the future more for what she did with her fame (promoting alternate energy sources, promoting interest in female music by founding Lilith Fair) and some of her stranger interview statements (like when she proclaimed she hated deodorant in that weird Details interview) than her actual musical output.

(Say what you like about Amos. She may have her periods of complacency, but she is not afraid to try new things. She may rush back to her core group of fans afterwards, but at least she tries.)

This is very, very typical Sarah McLachlan....but then, pretty much everything she puts out is. And that may be the problem.

McLachlan has an amazingly powerful instrument in her voice. It has the capacity for great emotional range, and when she allows herself to let loose like in 'Possession,' she can grab you by the metaphorical throat. But more often than not, she's content to take that voice and tether it to the same pseudo-jazz Cinemax-After-Dark-soundtrack background sludge that makes all her songs sound pretty much alike. And when she doing these song-a-likes, her voice ends up being technically sound....but cold, precise, like she's doing this more as an intellectual exercise. And even though the song could be about a failed relationship, could be about a failed marriage, could be about mental illness, could be about failed attempts at having a baby...it doesn't connect.

But then, in writing that last paragraph, that may be the genius of McLachlan as a songstress. The combination of haunting soundscapes and vague lyrics invite us to complete the story with our own experiences and impressions, so that the guy who sees this song as being about a failed marriage and the girl who interprets it as a song about regrets over an abortion are both right. McLachlan doesn't have to reveal anything of herself to make herself special; she lets the listener reveal things about themselves to make them love her. I may not appreciate that trick, but I respect it.

No video for this one, but here's a live performance from 2003....

Cover-versies: 'Dear God' by Sarah Maclachlan

I was listening to Brian Ibbot's excellent podcast Coverville this morning. It's a great twice-sometimes-thrice weekly show about, you know, cover songs--and I love me cover songs. A great cover of a song serves, much like a great remake of a movie or a theatrical production of a classic play, to illuminate and/or transform the original, giving us new insight into the artifact. In some rare cases, a cover of an awful song can raise that original up, revealing nuances the first artist either could not or would not explore.

Of course, sometimes that isn't always the case. And this is where Cover-versies come into play.

Getting back to the podcast....the episode I was listening to was the first part of the 2010 Coverville Countdown. And, amongst such gems as the version of 'Start Me Up' by The Folksmen (the surreal moment of my hero Harry Shearer intoning the salacious words of Mick Jagger as if he was Pete Seegar is just...wow), was the Sarah MacLachlan version of XTC's 'Dear God.' And, as always when I listen to that version, it bugged the crap out me.

Y'see, I know a lot of people who praise the MacLachlan version as being the superior one. And I can't disagree more. But before I get into it, let's look at the original by Andy Partridge and XTC...

This was originally intended as a B-Side for XTC's 1986 album, Skylarking...but apparently, American DJ's picked up on the song and gave it so much airplay that Virgin Records pulled the original version of the album to put it on in place of 'Mermaid Smile.' Even though it begins gently, this is a brutal song, a discourse about confronting religion and trying to coalesce it with your faith...and having to consider the fact that maybe they can't be reconciled. Even though it begins with the typical beautiful XTC string arrangements and a sweet boy singing, it rapidly becomes a railing against the storm, helped massively by the vocals of Andy Partridge. I know there are some people who might not care for Partridge's somewhat ungainly tones, but the emotion in his voice is raw and powerful--and I will always take a singer who is less classically trained but wears his emotions on his sleeve than one who studied at Juilliard any day.

So almost ten years later, in 1995, Sarah MacLachlan covers this song for the tribute album Testimonal Dinner: A Tribute To XTC. Here is a fan-made video with a woman named Kellie overacting....

You'll notice a couple of differences right off the bat....the changing of the arrangement to something jazzier, the slowing down of the tempo, the presence of a number of instruments that weren't there before (Hello, piano! How you doin', woodwinds?), the subtle-but-still-there treatment of MacLachlan's vocals, the removal of the slow build to make her outburst towards the end all the more dramatic. Maybe it's me, but all the alterations seem to take the savage bite out of the song, turning it into something, well safer. And the fact that MacLachlan's vocals never quite leave the range she sets up in the initial stanza without the producer fiddling with the gain nob blunts the arc of the song itself. In XTC's version, there's a whole passage where Partridge seems to be conspiring with the Creator (it comes at roughly the two minute, eight second mark), trying to cozy up to him to get him to admit that what he believes about him is the truth...only for that strategy to break down into his last bit of rage. That arc isn't in the MacLachlan version--it's all smoothy-cool-breeze jazzhands, her vocals remaining steady before BAM!, here comes the distortion and the echo to make Sarah sound like a monster, and it. just. doesn't. work. Even the way she tries to out-eccentric Partridge on some phrases--the way her voice consciously 'cracks' at the moments where Partridge tries to conspire--seem calculated.

The XTC version of 'Dear God' is sung from the point of view of a man who's been beaten down and has had Enough, railing and ranting and giving notice that he won't allow these things to stand. The Sarah MacLachlan version is sung from the point of view of a woman who reads about terrible tragedies in the paper, whines about it to her pomo friends in the Williamsburg bistro she hangs out in and decides to write a song in support with money she borrowed from her parents. The original is the better version.

Deal with it.

What cover songs would you like to see contrasted with their original? Let me know.