Who Did “Heart It Races” Better? | SOTW 08/30/2024
Well, if last week’s prophesied return was received like a new set of washboard abs (but really, thank you all so much for the glowing support), then this week’s sequel is the rolls of fat Homer Simpson is clipping behind his back (you know the meme, I’m just too lazy to use it). While three of last week’s songs plus the accompanying art were all fresh August additions, the rest came from this early June lineup, and I think it shows in some of these entries that I was starting to burn out. I considered scrapping this list entirely and including these songs as “honorable mentions” last time, but having already written out three entries, I felt it would be wasteful to delete all of those paragraphs. This week’s picks may be aimless, but I couldn’t hold off on sharing several of them for much longer, so I hope you’re all still onboard for a much less profound ride this week.
HEART IT RACES | Architecture in Helsinki Well, I know it’s conventional wisdom to bury the lead with your clickbait title so that people read the whole post first, but since I’m a slave to making album gradients on my graphics, it’s really out of my hands when we get to “Heart It Races.” In truth, I’m also just excited to finally manufacture an excuse to write a cover compare-contrast in Songs of the Week, because if my perfectly reasonable nomenclature suggestions didn’t say it loud enough, the constraints and mechanics of covers are fascinating to me. When it comes to categories as loosey-goosey as music, I fully recognize that nobody likes a stickler stick(l)ing definitions where they don’t belong…
but…(t)…
…to me, there’s sort of an intuitive (if murky) metric as to what constitutes a successful cover that goes beyond taste. Though I’m not often fallible, like anyone else, there’s obviously biases I’m bringing into these otherwise objective* terms—as we’ll see later, I’m real persnickety about allotting proper credit, and so I’m prone to unfairly (me?) begrudge covers that surpass the original in popularity. That said, there are even situations where this is warranted if a cover is successful enough at capturing the soul of an original piece, or even elaborating on a kernel the original artist didn’t fully expand. With popularity aside, though, my criteria for a successful cover lies in my conception of a song itself. Put confusingly, I feel every song draws from a transpersonal, emotional well, and is made special refracted through the soul of the musician. A successful cover, then, comes from another artist who drinks from that same well, but filters it differently through their own, unique soul. This is why I’ve been wanting to talk about “Heart It Races” since about May—since I first heard both versions back-to-back and still can’t decide which one’s better, it’s the perfect song & cover pair to parse out what’s working and what isn’t. Both are competent expressions filtered through completely different souls, creating a unique scenario where even comparing them feels like apples and oranges—they’re each good for completely different reasons.
In my heart, there’s no better place to start than the original piece, even though that’s the opposite order from how most discovered Architecture In Helsinki’s original song “Heart It Races.” Though their third album Places Like This charted in 2007, the fact that Architecture in Helsinki’s music is considered “pop” feels like yet another failure of the genre system (and don’t get me started on that)—it’s a fitting category only in its phonetics, because this band is absolutely a bubbly pop of weirdness. In my first listen to “Heart It Races,” I heard the stiltedness of Talking Heads, the goofiness of the B-52s, the ragtag collage of Superorganism, and the joyousness of Arcade Fire, but I think my sister put it best when she said it sounded “like Fraggle Rock” (it may not be praise to some, but in the Todd family home, a Jim Henson comparison is unmistakably flattery). Really, that description hits the nail on the head—this song’s got an eccentric cornucopia of percussion (steel drums, bongos, and cowbells, to name a few); cartoony, off-kilter vocals; and even a puppet-based music video featuring… a necromancer witch doctor who rips the other puppets’ hearts out? But like, not really in a way that’s more gruesome than goofy. It’s a gem reminiscent of Supergrass’s “Pumping on Your Stereo” video with the crunchiest Youtube quality courtesy of 2007.
If it wasn’t glaringly apparent from their video, their style, or even just their name (made from Newspaper cutouts, of course), this band is just bursting with heart and imagination, and this song is a perfect ambassador—its lyrics are abstract and slapstick, its music is patchwork and muppety, and its singers clash delightfully in their chants, rhymes, and even a nice scream towards the end. I’ve seen it debated whether or not this version is the more passionate (particularly by Dr. Dog diehards), but if our definition of passion is unbridled, consuming enthusiasm coming from a place of truth and not performance, then this version is the clear winner in that category. However, there’s a lot more factors to consider, which is why I cheated and squeezed an extra song review into this entry:
HEART IT RACES | Dr. Dog covering Architecture in Helsinki A much more apt genre I’ve seen applied to Architecture in Helsinki is “freak folk,” and while I’ll concede that it’s exactly the kind of pretentious label-making Spotify throws in everyone’s Wrapped that you’ll never hear anywhere else (“stomp and holler?”), you can’t convince me it isn’t spot on. If Architecture in Helsinki’s “Heart it Races” is freak folk, however, then Dr. Dog’s is just folk, and that pretty much says it all. I’m not a poet, though, so I’m gonna say it all again in excruciating detail. It would come as a surprise to my twelve-year-old-self, but I’ve become quite amenable to Dr. Dog as a concept—though they started off on the wrong foot by opening my second-ever concert and making me wait for Wilco, you can trace their redemption arc through tentative Songs of the Week reviews that regrettably grow more positive. Admittedly, “Heart it Races” might plateau that praise, but I’d say “pretty solid” is a perfectly nice place to tread water, no? In fact, were it not a cover, I think I’d have nothing but pleasant feelings about Dr. Dog’s take—most of my problems only emerge in comparison to the original’s soul and scope, which leaves Dr. Dog looking a little plain.
I have a much longer essay about adapting weirdness for general audiences hibernating somewhere, and though we won’t wake it today, one thing I always notice is that when any media critics might call “off-beat” gets a far-more-popular adaptation, it’s met with a lot of gatekeeping snark from the original fans that’s louder than the praise it’s rebutting. It’s a response that’s often warranted and, even when it’s not, is one I completely understand—setting aside my (mis)crediting neuroses, when weird art makes someone feel seen in your weirdness, but is only understood by the masses when said weirdness gets sucked out of it for easier consumption, it can often feel like a proof that weirdness can only be accepted when totally sanitized. It’s a feeling I’m familiar with, and one that always makes me wonder what magical individuality is even left to like after being so processed, but at least in the case of “Heart it Races,” I can safely say Dr. Dog isn’t responsible for some capitalist weirdness massacre—these guys had the humility to mark their take “(cover version)” on streaming where so many other musicians leave listeners to figure that out on their own. While I’ll certainly argue they misunderstood pieces of what makes this song impactful, nobody can convince me this cover isn’t quintessentially Dr. Dog, with its fuzzy harmonies, millennial clapping, and smokey keyboard. I add those judgey adjectives not necessarily out of spite, but to emphasize that fortunately for Dr. Dog, what’s “quintessentially Dr. Dog” also happens to be a very popular sound, with bassist and vocalist Toby Leaman’s indie-folk croak sounding as overplayed as it is undeniably individual. It’s a lucky fact that I don’t hold against them as artists, especially when several of these signatures interact with the soul of the original in a really interesting way. Everything about this cover is understated, from its production to its instrumentation, and this leeway for contrast allows Dr. Dog’s take to be easily king of pacing, no contest. Longtime Max Todd Dot Com (Max! Todd! Dot! Com!) readers will know a good build will sell just about anything for me, and I welcome Dr. Dog putting that PhD brain to work creating a gradient across what was once a tonally flat song. The best execution of this happens within the last minute or so of the song in a jam that the original is sorely missing, starting with two climbing, harmonizing guitars and patiently layering fuzzy, background “boomdadadadadadas,” overlapping excerpts of incomplete lyrics, and finally, harmonies that break free from Dr. Dog’s cleanness with a twinge of the original’s fraying vocals. Like the best of jams, this one establishes a strong, straightforward trunk to follow for most of the song before disintegrating into an intersecting canopy of leaves that totally envelops the listener, and for me, it works every time.
In this respect, it makes sense for Dr. Dog to tone down the weirdness, because starting at 100% leaves little room for layering, but this tactic came at the cost of so much of the original’s magic. Filtering the celebratory camp of Architecture in Helsinki through Dr. Dog’s folky sensibilities leads to a wistful, nostalgic drowsiness—it’s not quite the melancholy that I’m known to overprescribe, but what happiness was once here has certainly faded. This maps onto the original with varying success, but rarely am I totally convinced by the result. One oddity I noticed was that this tone changes how listeners interpret the lyrics, at least in the comment sections I surveyed. In context with the psychedelic silliness of the original, it’s clear that these lyrics are meant to be surreal and scattered, freeing lines like “legs like little splinters” and “I sold it to a man and threw him out that window / He went boom-dadadadadadada boom-dadadada / Made his wife a widow” from concrete meaning with a wink. However, spoken in Dr. Dog’s more dignified, reflective tone, I suddenly saw listeners discovering wisdom or literary cleverness in lines like “And we’re slow to acknowledge the knots in the laces” or “Lately you’ve been tanned / suspicious for the winter” that they might have dismissed as meaningless amidst the original’s oddness. I’d be lying if I said this didn’t aggravate an aforementioned something in me about (mis)crediting, but I wouldn’t say this interpretive flexibility is completely a con. That honor, however, goes to the background vocals of this cover, featuring screams reduced to singing and chants that seem ashamed to be chants. While I’m not sure how these elements might sound if more faithfully transplanted into Dr. Dog’s style, I think the fuzzed-out “boomdadadadadadas” and the monotone “Heart it Races” ladder that had Architecture in Helsinki climbing from a whisper to a scream are the closest this song comes to actually sanitizing weirdness, losing passion in the process.
So, after all of that deliberation, can I satisfy that clickbait title with a decisive winner? To that I say, why pit two queens against each other—who do you think I am, some kind of politician? Knowing my biases for originals and weirdness alike, Architecture in Helsinki will always have an edge in my heart, but even after picking apart Dr. Dog’s work, I can’t say I don’t enjoy theirs just as much after listening to that jam. Sorry guys—if you come here for decisive takes, I hope you’ve learned your lesson.
Pairs Well With: “I Love the Animals” (Robert Bobbert & The Bubble Machine), “Everybody Wants to be Famous” (Superorganism), “Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club” (Blur)
PARTY TIME | The Northern Boys Well, if Wilco’s take on death last week didn’t do it for you, there’s always an alternative, but I’m not sure anyone’s ready for it:
Sing it with me:
I love drugs and sketchy pills
But my favourite ones are the ones that kill, quickly
When I go, will my loved ones miss me?
Well the answer's noChuck my corpse in a big main road
Turn my head to a powdered skull
Let rain pour, turn that to mulch
And that's the last scene of The Patrick Show
That’s where I have to cut myself off, because otherwise, I’d recite every line in the song like an eight year old with a binder of Pokémon cards and a captive audience. I don’t think it’s out of line to say parody rap’s been bad since the nineties, but the Northern Boys unabashedly nail it because they’re the last people you’d expect rap to come from—and the last people you’d expect to consistently spit fire.
“Party Time” is the rap equivalent of “old man yells at cloud,” except there’s two of them yelling plus a third who is dancing fancy free (and that man, their mate Kevin, is killing it). I think sampling Estelle’s “American Boy (feat. Kanye West)” (which you might also know from the more ubiquitous “Chug Jug With You” parody… you know, “just wiped out Tomato Town”) sets up “Party Time” perfectly—the serenity of its glistening, PBS synth is absolutely shattered by the barking, belligerent rap of certified old British man Norman Pain, and no matter how much pain he’s in, he does not let up. “Bald, mean, and full of beans,” Pain’s abrasive, barbaric abandon would still be incomplete without co-star Patrick Karneigh Junior’s nihilistic indifference—a subtle distinction, but you can’t tell me bouncing to (yelled) “Don't want to fall in love, I just want to get fucked / Shovelling mountains of terrible stuff / Heroin, Ketamine, Jellybean Puff (Ugh) / Shove it in me brain, get it all mixed up” is the same as (mumbled) “Hang meself in the neighbour's garden / When he comes back, that's a nice surprise / Let the darkness just take your soul / Listen up chile, close your eyes.” Though this dichotomy has been noticed by other distinguished Northern Boys connoisseurs, Pain and Karneigh Junior are comfortable switching characters, with Pain bellowing the sullen “I'm not used to these kinds of mental health / Issues, I just wanna live in a church / And find peace upon me brain / Jesus, please just stop me pain” while Patrick proclaims the carefree “Call me grandad 'cause I fucked your nan.” And, like, since we’re already rolling, some other honorable mentions are “I gotta go, I gotta take a number three / That's a piss and a shit and a wank in a tree,” and “I said a hip, a hop, a hip (Hey, hey) / I dip my dick in the salsa dip on a Taco Tuesday,” and Kevin peeing in the bushes at the end… crap, I’m doing the Pokémon card thing. These guys are so fucking funny, which unfortunately means they’re in a league almost of their own, so forgive me if all of my pairings are just Flight of the Conchords.
Pairs Well With: “Chug Jug With You” (Leviathan), “Sugar Lumps” (Flight of the Conchords), “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros” (Flight of the Conchords)
ALL FALLS DOWN | Lizzy McAlpine Lizzy McAlpine might seem a bit out of left field for me, but she’s a staple in my girlfriend’s library. If she’s not gonna be hipster about it, I will—she’s liked McAlpine since way before it was cool, back when McAlpine’s career was simply singing covers on instagram and occasionally sprinkling in tentative originals. After obsessing over her album Five Seconds Flat, she even saw McAlpine on the last leg of her first tour performing at Denver’s tiniest venue, the Larimer Lounge. Seeing as that’s where my Snail Mail superfan sister casually met Linsey Jordan before a show, I was secretly gunning for my girlfriend to bump into McAlpine the same way (and hey, maybe even do some networking), but she returned largely disappointed—as I understand it, McAlpine’s performance, though technically talented, rung rigid, ragged, and almost entirely absent. Lizzy, if you’re listening (along with the rest of the world, my readership)—I made some jokes here and there about you thinking you’re too good to be besties with my girlfriend, but after listening to your new album, Older, I should really apologize. What my girlfriend and I initially speculated to be a general discontent with performance or a discomfort with stage presence, as it turns out, was just the tip of an iceberg which Older documents. Chronicling her breakdown across this first tour, Older reveals McAlpine was going through the wringer managing unprecedented panic attacks and a crumbling relationship. While she’s clearly healed from it, these stacking incidents seemed to forever changed the way she’ll approach her career. Though neither my girlfriend nor I have seen her on this tour, word of mouth says that even at massive venues like Red Rocks, she’s massively stripped down her set to just herself, an acoustic guitar, and a couch—not far from the instagram setup where she began. While I, personally, am always a little skeptical of solo acoustic performances (this was written before seeing Adrianne Lenker’s spellbinding Mission Ballroom performance, which you’ll all be hearing about next week), I’m very inspired by McAlpine’s defiance of industry standards in favor of her mental health—rather than reshaping herself to succeed in the system, she’s reshaping the system to succeed as herself. It’s a lesson I had to learn in college and will continue learning as an artist entering the job market. As I mentioned in the intro, I’ve spent a lot of time considering the reach of my blog and what it’s worth—after all, symbiosis with an audience is, to me, half of what makes art worthwhile. I say symbiosis not to be pretentious, but specifically because art’s not just give-and-take—ideally, both artist and audience build one another up, and sometimes, a seemingly selfish choice on the artist’s part can actually, in the long run, keep that relationship healthy. Make what you want to make, share it how you want to share it, and the time and space you’ve given yourself will reflect in the resulting work—whether they know it or not, audiences will smell that extra dedication and respond accordingly.
For all this talk about stripping down, for example, “All Falls Down” certainly sounds fleshed out, taking layered, instrumental risks that are a testament to McAlpine’s rejuvenation. As with Five Seconds Flat, I only really resonated with two songs from Older, but I’ve unashamedly latched onto the cozy, quirky sound of “All Falls Down.” Despite its lyrics straightforwardly processing McAlpine’s panic attacks on tour sans frills of any sort, her soundscape is thick and loamy with warm piano and woodwinds galore. While there’s a lot for fans of McAlpine to like, to me, it’s the mossy clarinet that’s doing the heavy lifting—it’s such an odd choice of instrument for someone with her background, yet it fits perfectly for this song’s perkiness, peeking furtively through the melancholy. Though I’ve paired this with the New Pornographer’s jubilant “Graceland” (and I think rightfully so), this one is distinctly more sullen—even a little angry when McAlpine’s voice and drums come blasting in at the end—and is pretty tonally different despite very similar chords. In spite of its content, I can’t help but feel soothed by this piece, especially in context with McAlpine’s shifts towards comfort. Thanks for the inspiration, Lizzy.
Pairs Well With: “Graceland” (New Pornographers), “Lazarus” (David Byrne & St. Vincent), “Look Around You” (Jim Noir),
EVERY 1’s A WINNER | Hot Chocolate I’m starting to realize I have a funk song every summer—everyone witnessed me raving about Ohio Players’s “Love Roller Coaster” [Reviewed 07/14/2024] last year, but just before I started writing Songs of the Week in July of 2022, Jean Knight’s “Do Me” was on heavy repeat, and though I think it’s technically listed as R&B/Soul, how could you call the entirety of Stevie Wonder’s As (2021’s pick) anything but funky? As written, comet funk has once again flown by, this time manifesting as Hot Chocolate’s incredible “Every 1’s A Winner,” a classic that needs no introduction—no less from this funkless stiff. Can you think of anything less funky than blogging? Maybe National Public Radio?
Though most know it from its feature in Grown Ups and Anchorman 2, I’m glad I first heard “Every 1’s A Winner’s” hall-of-fame riff from my Dad’s, um, spirited vocal approximation when he found it unshakably stuck in his head. To his credit, he didn’t miss the mark quite as bad as some full-blown covers (and you all know I love Ty Segall, but his cover was dead in the water as soon as he changed the key), but he sure sold me on how solid this song is. The magic, to me, isn’t in the riff itself, but in the dedicated cheese dripping through every layer of production. As with my defense of “La Danse Des Méduses,” to me, datedness isn’t always a bad thing—when done correctly, in fact, there’s nothing quite as fun as 70’s cheese, and embracing this is the secret to Hot Chocolate’s unique success. While this song’s iconic riff is instantly recognizable—fatty, crunchy, and sparkly all at once, like a deep-fried donut dunked in glistening microplastics—it doesn’t hit nearly as hard without each ingredient in tandem. The same, I’d say, goes for the falsetto choir that harmonizes on “satisfied,” the proud, blasting brass, or the disco synth that shows the chorus out—such exuberantly maximalist shoes just won’t fit musicians who aren’t one hundred percent committed. To me, that’s why most covers I’ve heard fall so flat—in the best funk, there’s a goofiness that’s so fantastically heartfelt that it rounds the corner into coolness, but few can fully embraced such zen-ness. So says Funkadelic: “Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow.” Don’t, uh, maybe don’t use that song as an example… it’s a lot spookier than you’d expect.
Pairs Well With: “Do Me” (Jean Knight), “Pusherman” (Curtis Mayfield) [Reviewed 12/01/2022], “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” (Al Green and Annie Lennox covering Jackie DeShannon)
NOMAD | Clairo Hey, and while we’re off the beaten path with Lizzy McAlpine, let me also just thank my girlfriend for having Clairo’s Charm on repeat throughout the house, because I’ve come to really like it… just like everyone else and their mother. While I’ve previously been put off by Clairo’s dispassionate, aloof disposition (though, to be clear, nowhere near as annoyed as my embarrassing TV Girl tirade), from the first, stuttering chords of “Sexy to Someone,” I was as hooked as the rest of the internet. “Sexy to Someone” has since been outcompeted by “Nomad’s” sweeping chorus, “Juna’s,” starry sparkles, and “Terrapin’s” spiraling piano, but all four have me wondering if I owe Charm a full listen—I’m verifiably a Clairo novice, but my brief skim of reviews confirms my suspicion that this third album marks both a refinement of her sound and an expansion into experimental instrumentation, both of which have me curious. Though “Terrapin” and “Juna” are perhaps better examples of Charm’s surprising “ooh, what’s that?” moments, when it came time to highlight a song, I couldn’t get “Nomad’s” chorus out of my head, so here we are. While Nomad has plenty of subtler sonic oddities—in particular, there’s a breathy, lo-fi synth near the end of a verse that sounds fittingly like a distant train whistle—I think it exemplifies how tightly curated Charm’s sound appears to be. Oxymoronically, “Nomad” manages to be both meandering and catchy, with a winding, finger-picked chorus just complex enough not to settle into a hummable tune and a whooshing chorus that sounds strong despite Clairo’s hushed voice, which gives her harmonies a soft but powerful texture. Maybe it’s because I’ve been associating Charm with this week’s painting since, oh, June (I know, we’ll catch up eventually), but the hazy, film-grain green of its album cover is a perfect fit for this velvety atmosphere, and that sort of synergy is always a good sign to me. With grad school on the horizon, the jury’s still out on if I’ll find the time for a full Charm listen, but I think it’s pretty cool that I for once see the same promise that Tiktok does. Let’s just… can we agree not to overplay this one, guys? Please?
Pairs Well With: “When” (Deau Eyes), “Walk on the Wild Side” (Lou Reed), “Seed of a Seed” (Haley Heynderickx)
HORSE AND TRAIN | Alex Colville I’m sure I’ve explained this before, but some of my favorite paintings are essentially still films—a moving moment that won’t stay frozen. Realism, especially in Western America, is often far from my thing, but Alex Colville’s bluntly-titled “Horse and Train” packs a perfect punch to me. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen this painting animated in one of the final chapters of Justin Tomchuk’s Interface (specifically at 5:58 in Episode 23, although if you’re new to Interface, please start from the beginning—the full series is just under two hours, and it’s such an amazing, creative, beautiful blast, especially if you don’t look any further into Tomchuk’s politics about AI and, like, vaccines), but there’s so much effortless dynamism to this piece that you don’t even find in a lot of comic books. I think that energy, for me, is actually in part thanks to this piece’s symbolism, which feels just as resonant as the movement itself—you can feel the rumbling collision of nature and industrialism in every moment of modern life.