Archive for the ian curtis tag

Editors: Lullaby

It seems like I've been posting a lot of covers lately. I hope you don't mind, but here's another, a bit inspired by Nocturna this evening. If you've somehow managed to not hear Editors before, go check them out; this may be a cover, but it's an excellent example of their style.

In a statement about their most recent album and criticism of its tone, Tom Smith wrote, "dark is interesting, dark is exciting, dark can be funny, there’s real life in the dark, real life IS dark...I am so fucking bored of people asking us why we’re so “dark”, or worse questioning our integrity for being this way, this is how we do it, it excites us to express ourselves like this, to be honest we don't even understand what the alternative is and the alternatives we can imagine are too boring for us to even consider". Did he just write the Grufti Manifesto?*

Who better to rework a Cure song, then, than Editors? Smith invokes Ian Curtis to make Robert Smith's lyrics a little more paranoid, but I'm still not buying that he's really afraid of "the spider man". In fact, I suspect that he might just be inviting him over for dinner.

This track is taken from the BBC Radio 1 Established 1967 2 disc compilation, released in 2007 and bizarrely listed as being a Kaiser Chiefs album (they contributed the first track). It chronicles 40 years of the legendary radio show with 40 artists doing a cover for each year. Editors were assigned 1989; they certainly did right to choose a song off of Disintegration.

official website
Buy Editors on Amazon.com

*I prefer the word "grufti" because it's much more inclusive than "goth". I encourage you to use it as well!

Tiger Baby: Love Will Tear Us Apart

Since we're doing a tribute to Ian Curtis this week, I'm going to take this opportunity to post a song that I love but never play: Tiger Baby's excellent cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart". Done in their signature sweet-but-meloncholy style of synthpop, this is by far my favorite cover of this song that I've ever heard. As I mentioned in a post last month, this isn't their only great cover, either. If you like this, you'll find it's very representative of Tiger Baby's original material, which I highly recommend.

As for why I never play it:
Frankly, I don't have the balls. I'm afraid the crowd will lynch me if they hear anything but the original. Also it has this 30 second long beatless break in the middle--that's a long time on the dance floor. But Darrel keeps requesting it, so maybe someday...

Taken from their 2006 album Noise Around Me, available directly from the band's own online shop.
official website