Covers can be incredibly tricky. How to reinvent a track without destroying it and thereby angering and alienating a band’s legions of adoring fans? And where to even begin with a group like Arcade Fire? The Montreal-based art rockers top CBC Music’s list of the 100 best Canadian bands of all time in part because they’re these masters of grandeur, conductors of beautifully refined chaos, riding every chorus to its crashing crescendo without ever going off the rails.
CBC Music released its own humble cover yesterday, the incomparable Father John Misty’s acoustic take on “The Suburbs.” Here are five more artists that braved the challenges of an Arcade Fire cover with glorious results. Check out our favourites and then let us know what we missed in the comments below.
John Legend and the Roots, ‘Wake Up’
This 2010 collaboration is spine-tingling perfect, from Legend pounding the keys to Questlove punishing those drums, voices soaring up, up, up. It’s faithful to the original, but not in service of it, carving out its own identity, and stands as one of the best covers of all time.
Hey Ocean!, ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’
There’s so much happening (brass, flute, keys, double percussion, guitars, violin, more) but it’s all so beautifully restrained and evocative, it’s the feeling of finally holding hands with someone you’ve loved from afar for a long, long time.
Trampled By Turtles, ‘Rebellion’
Bluegrass Arcade Fire? Yes! The fingerpicking, the furious fiddling, it’s all about the instrumentation on this cover, which makes it a total reinvention that’s easy to get behind.
Tears for Fears, ‘Ready to Start’
This is tightly controlled chaos, frenzied but restrained, and wonderfully odd. Eclectic and curious moments abound, and the sudden left turns (club beats into orchestral flourishes into space jams and then back again) are delightfully startling and jagged, like discovering your new favourite rollercoaster.
Mr. Little Jeans, ‘Suburbs’
Glitchy, dreamy and cool, like those underwater mermaid shows, every moment more intoxicating, perplexing and trippier than the next.
Bonus track: I have loved the Young @ Heart chorus since watching the documentary in 2008 (watch it, seriously, so great), and their cover of “Modern Man” re-contextualizes the whole song and gets me right in the feelings.
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