First Spin: A Camp Covers!

Artist: A Camp
Album: Covers EP
Release Date: June 16, 2009
Genre: Swedish Pop/Rock

Not sure if you read my concert review blog last week where I talked about A Camp’s show at the Mod Club in Toronto. Well I spoke that we were going to have a first spin of their new singles EP and here it is.

I am pretty stoked about A Camp as Nina Persson (lead singer for A Camp as well as The Cardigans) is definitely one of my favourite female vocalists. This album is just a three track EP of cover songs from Pink Floyd, David Bowie and Grace Jones. Here is a bit of info on why they chose to do these particular covers:

“US + THEM“: By Pink Floyd of course, is one of the most beautiful songs imaginable. The only reason we thought we could approach this one at all is it just seemed to sit perfectly within our musical vocabulary and we thought Nina’s voice could perhaps add another dimension to this already brilliant piece of music. There’s a reason why Dark Side of the Moon is one of the most popular albums of all time. It’s an absolutely timeless work. This track could go on forever; it’s like a wonderful dream.

“BOYS KEEP SWINGING“: Who doesn’t love Bowie? He’s given us so much… and again we thought it would be rocking to hear this particular track come out of a girl’s mouth. We think it lends the song a different angle. Plus at this point it’s the loudest thing in our live set and is a massive energy release. It’s a totally catchy song as well and it’s like Bowie just said to hell with it and recorded things in the most train-wrecked non-commercial way he could come up with, almost guaranteeing its commercial failure back in ‘79. Fantastic… off of his Lodger record, which is packed with excellent songs.

“DONE IT AGAIN“: Grace Jones did this originally on her Nightclubbing album (pull up to my bumper baby!), and itÂ’s a hot track. We were drawn initially to the bizarre very smart lyrics from the outset and also that the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind is name-checked, that HAS to be the only instance of that in pop music. The time-travel/”ZELIG” tone to the words made a lot of sense as well as that’s kind of our vibe with Colonia. And we dug the sweet cocaine, studio-in-Barbados groove. The song manages to simultaneously seem nearly asleep and yet totally insane (in the best way), full of this world-weary sadness, plus a rage deep in there somewhere… not unlike Grace herself! As it happens we were on tour recently in Europe about a day behind her, so would see fresh traces of her along our journey, it was spooky and fun. We don’t believe she really exists. This track has become a fan fave in our live show. It’s got that Bosso flav; and Nina gets to bust out her magic c! laves!

Give it a listen. I unfortunately don’t know the original songs of these as they were before my time but doesn’t mean we all can’t enjoy the covers.