Indiepop Does Indiepop: YMG & The Pines

Young Marble Giants' "Brand-New-Life" covered by The Pines.

Before getting to the songs, I should probably introduce what will likely be a weekly thing now (until I run out of songs, of course). I was driving home from Baltimore a few weeks ago with some friends and I decided it would be fun to play nothing but covers, and then their respective original versions all the way home. It was fun and seemed to be sort of endless, so I thought it might be something I could turn into a regular feature here, so I'm gonna try to do that! I hope you like it!

There's no better way to start it off than with the super-minimalistic post-punk of the Young Marble Giants. An interesting and difficult band to cover, but if anyone was up for the task, it was Joe Brooker and Pam Berry. Their cover of "Brand - New - Life" is kind of perfect, as far as covers go. They succeeded tremendously in making the song "theirs" to the point that it sounds like it could have easily been a Pines original. Joe's guitarwork flows beautifully, adding several brand new elements into the song, but still relying on YMG's brilliant original meldodies. Personally, though, I'm still a bigger fan of the original. That riff is totally unforgettable (you know the one) and there's just so much tension resting on Alison Statton's vocals that you cannot help but be completely mesmerized.

[MP3]: Young Marble Giants :: Brand - New - Life
[MP3]: The Pines :: Brand - New - Life

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LISTEN TO IN INTERVIEW

If you do one thing today, it should be listening to IN INTERVIEW. These kids are from NYC and are pretty much my new favorite thing (now if I could just catch them live, like everyone else did last week, that would be nice). Not to belittle the band to just one petty description, but if you could imagine what the Young Marble Giants would've sounded like if they all drank more coffee and thought horns were a good idea (horns ARE a good idea, by the way). It's also important to note that they also put on quite a fantastic live show. Though they've been together since at least 2004, there haven't been any releases besides a showing on a Teenbeat sampler of that same year. As such, they're currently shopping around for a label, so somebody pick these guys up!!! I have no MP3s, so I urge urge urge you to go to their MySpace and listen the two tracks they have up – espeically "I'll Confess," which I must say, is the fucking jam.

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