What Law?

Not much to say and not much time to say it, but Pretty Songs Week continues with this real nice John Cale cover.

• The Hope Blister, “Hanky Panky Nohow” (buy here)

The Cale original’s on Paris 1919 (buy here); the Hope Blister album is called ...Smile’s OK. And since this is also apparently Lyric-Quoting Week, well, I sure do like this bit:

There's a law for everything
And for elephants that sing to keep
The cows that agriculture won’t allow

The Hope Blister was (is?) kind of a This Mortal Coil offshoot, I think, so what the hell, let’s get to another real nice cover.

• This Mortal Coil, “You and Your Sister” (buy here)
  

It’s from Blood, which sits somewhere in my basement on cassette (!), and the original was by doomed Big Star co-founder Chris Bell (buy here). Bell’s version is rawer, rickety; the Coil version sounds beamed-in from some other, more blurry dimension. Which is cool too. (Oh, and that’s Kim Deal and Tanya Donnelly singing, by the way – or am I just being pedantic about things that everybody already knows?)

Can’t remember, is Blood the one with the Big Star covers, too, “Holocaust” and “Kanga Roo”? Ah. Nope, that’s It’ll End in Tears. Thank you, Internet. Oh yeah, and Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” as well. They did have impeccable taste.