There’s been some grumbling about the last two installments of the A.V. Club’s web series “Undercover: 25 Bands, 25 Cover Songs, 1 Small Room,” which saw prog-metal outfit Coheed & Cambria covering The Smiths and Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump going solo acoustic to tackle The Wedding Present.
This week, though, is a different story: Veteran Chapel Hill, N.C., indie rockers Superchunk turned in an appropriately raucous cover of The Cure’s 1985 single “Inbetween Days,” giving the chipper pop tune a rough-and-tumble makeover.
The series — which also has featured Ted Leo and the Pharmacists covering Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and Maritime doing Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence” — has just a few more songs left available for visiting artists to cover, including The Replacements’ “I Will Dare” and R.E.M.’s “Driver 8.”
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Video: Wedding Present’s ‘My Favourite Dress’ covered by Patrick Stump
- Video: The Smiths’ ‘A Rush and a Push’ covered by Coheed & Cambria
- Video: The Wedding Present covers the Rolling Stones’ ‘19th Nervous Breakdown’
- Video: Depeche Mode’s ‘Enjoy the Silence’ covered by Maritime for the A.V. Club
- Video: Ted Leo covers Tears for Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’
I appreciate the instrumentals being just slightly on the gritty side. A definite part of the charm in the original is the juxtaposition between the upbeat tune and the mournful lyrics, but every so often it’s nice to hear a song played with the ‘appropriate’ mood. I feel like they got it angsty enough without over doing it and Inbetween Days definitely has a malleable enough melody for adaptations of different move. The vocals weren’t particularly impressive, but alternatively there’s nothing much to complain about with them either, that and they didn’t particularly seem to be the focus of the song.
I like this version very much. A HUGE Cure fan, but I would have enjoyed the Cure’s version a lot more it they had left the keyboard out. I guess they were trying to make a proper “pop” song. It’s still a classic either way.
good job Superchunk!
Trey