Dark masters of epic ambience, Canadian duo Nadja further blur the lines between what’s ostensibly doom-metal and strongly emotive textural material with an album of cover versions of songs by – so they say – some of their favourite artists.
Now, Swans, Codeine and My Bloody Valentine I can buy; The Cure and Slayer, too, given the cross-genre appeal and huge influence of both. But A-ha? Yup, ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’ is present and correct here, as the record’s title goes some way to implying, but this is nothing like the smash-hit single you’ll remember from your youth. Six minutes of fuzz-drenched dirge, albeit with crisp lyrics cutting through the furious fug of slow-motion guitar tectonics, the interpretation is unique to say the least. Do not expect too many fists to be punching the air in ironic reverence should the DJ at your local students’ union mistakenly slip this into their CDJ instead of the original; rather, anticipate a mass sit down, heads hung low in laps, introspection ruling over exuberance. Introspection, and tinnitus.
Rather straighter of adaptation is MBV’s calling card offering ‘Only Shallow’, which benefits here from a harder-edged guitar façade, but still swirls as magically as the 18-year-old original. Rather less obvious is the duo’s take on Elliott Smith’s ‘Needle In The Hay’, transformed from tenderly gentle arrangement (albeit with a wicked lyrical slant) to one that, basically, bludgeons where Smith would proffer only a whisper to get his point across. As it happens, both routes to one’s senses are effective – one’s best played in the dark with the sheets up over your head, the other… oh, no, wait.
See, what’s surprising is the care that’s been taken here – it’d have been easy to dress these songs in another’s clothing, simply turning everything way up beyond eleven and retaining the basic structure of the informant material, but Nadja reinterpret these pieces in such a fashion that they become their own while also serving as tributes to the originals. This isn’t imitation as flattery: it’s re-working as reverence. And it all comes together really quite excellently.
And there’s even a version of ‘Long Dark Twenties’ from the Kids In The Hall flick, Brain Candy, sitting as the penultimate effort on a perplexingly refreshing album that never treats its subjects with anything but the utmost respect. Honestly, if that doesn’t all add up to a completely unprecedented release, what the fuck does?
