Another Form of Relief

This is something that I’ve been looking forward to for a while now. Art Brut are one of my favourite bands of recent years, and I quite like We Are Scientists, even if I felt they have never lived up to their potential. Anyway, the two bands are touring together in the US at the moment under the banner of ‘The Also-Ran Buzz Bands Tour’. Seeing these two together would be pretty cool in itself, but they have gone a step further and have released a tour only single where they cover a song from the other band, both of which you’ll find below.

(I wouldn’t usually put up both parts of a single like this, but hey, it’s a tour only release, and if you’re going to one of the shows, odds are you’re going to buy it anyway.)

I’m glad that the We Are Scientists song that Art Brut decided to cover was ‘The Great Escape’, largely for the selfish reason that it’s my favourite WAS song. I’m indifferent toward many of their songs, but this thankfully isn’t one of them. Team Brut don’t really change the song in any major way, but obviously adding Eddie Argos’ voice into the mix of any song will give it an entirely different sound. He sings in his usual manic way over the top of surprisingly restrained instrumentation, which paradoxically ends up giving the sound a more urgent sound than the original, particularly when it gets a little solo happy in the last minute.

MP3 Art Brut - The Great Escape (expired)

We Are Scientists on the other hand manage to completely re-invent ‘Bang Bang Rock & Roll’, turning it into something akin to a 70’s dirty rock song. Which while taking some getting used to is actually pretty damn cool. This doesn’t even sound like the kind of thing that WAS usually come up with, so for them to do this with someone else’s song is quite an achievement. I probably wouldn’t even recognise that this was an Art Brut cover without knowing that it was beforehand. Which is no bad thing given how a cover is always far more fun when the bands involved play with the songs a bit rather than just repeat them.

MP3 We Are Scientists - Bang Bang Rock & Roll (expired)

Art Brut: Website || Myspace
We Are Scientists: Website || Myspace