Electron Blue

With Electron Blue I've done a full on cover of the live version of the song. The album version is far too "spacey" for my liking. And, since I was going for a more raw sound with this, I had some fun adding layers of experimental guitar noises and feedback. I actually use a kitchen knife on the guitar strings at one point to achieve the sound I'm after.

Electron Blue was one of those songs I wasn't keen on when I first bought Around The Sun but it has grown on me over the years and I now consider it to be one of the more successful of their genre-experiment songs.

Aftermath

Aftermath may well be the most boring song R.E.M. have ever wrote, with lyrics that fall into Stipe's "pep-talk" category and a video that the band should be ashamed of! Instrumentally, the drums are so uninspiring, it would be interesting to know what Bill Berry might have done differently to give the song more life, that's assuming Bill would have allowed the song to make it on to an album in the first place. Even Mike Mills can't come to the rescue this time with an interesting bass line.

I was as bored covering this as I am listening to it so I wanted to make it a bit more guitar-orientated than the piano/organ dirge on Around The Sun. I also brought in the mandolin, mainly just for the hell of it. The result isn't that bad, I think, considering what I was given to work with...

Boy In The Well

Another example of a song that is actually rather good but because it exists on an album surrounded by other slow-tempo ballads it comes across a bit bland and uninspiring. But, like a lot of songs on Around The Sun, Boy In The Well is rescued by the rich, emotion-laden quality of Stipe's voice.

As is often the case with my covers I aim to strike a balance between the album and live version. In this case, the live version is from the 2005 Dublin performance from the R.E.M. Live CD/DVD. The band have often commented that the songs from Around The Sun subsequently worked better live which is often true but there is a beauty about the album version that is lost when played live. 

In attempting to mix and match the best parts for my cover the most obvious thing is the electric guitar during the verses which is as per the live version. To my knowledge the band only played this song once acoustically and that was for the album recording. I've kept the strings and electric piano parts from the album version as they sound particularly nice in the intro and verses. I've gone for a more feedback-driven electric guitar sound for the choruses and middle 8 which, again, is based on the way they played the song live. Finally, I've added a mandolin to the choruses just to fill the sound out.

I Took Your Name

It was inevitable that I would cover this song while working on Crush With Eyeliner as it pretty much provides a musical template for I Took Your Name. 

I Took Your Name is a really easy, fun song to play. This probably explains why the band often chose it to open sets with – it's a handy warm-up song.

There isn't really much to add to this song other than to say that, despite its simplicity, I'm pleased with how my cover turned out and had real fun recording it.

Suspicion

It was listening to the studio demo of this song, on the Warner Brothers Rarities album that made me decide to cover this song. It's a little more guitar orientated and more of a "band performance" than the version that appears on Up.

But the strength of the song is in its mood and feel rather than in the music itself. The song plays out like a dream and it's the vibraphone and strings (and the heavy reverbing of these instruments) that help achieve this sleepy, semi-conscious feeling. So I found myself setting out to create a more stripped down version of the song but found myself adding the album embellishments back in as I went along.

The sound of the guitar solo is the closest approximation that I could get. For a while I wasn't convinced it was even a guitar playing this part but I guess it is, just heavily modulated and delayed. The performance of the song at The Bridge School Benefit is on YouTube and the song is played acoustically and it's quite interesting to watch Peter Buck play this solo on acoustic guitar with no effects.

This also marks the first use of my voice in a recording within this covers project! See if you can spot it!