3 Bar Fire - Life Beyond Mars

Life Beyond Mars - Bowie Covered

Written by Owain Paciuszko

Monday, 30 June 2008

I love cover versions, obviously it helps when they're done well, but I do find a strange enjoyment in hearing another artist's interpretation of a fellow musician's work - whether it's a cover of a classic or a minor tune. As long as they put their own spin on the track and don't just produce a rather pointless cookie-cutter copy.

Bowie himself is a frequent coverer (Is that a word? - It is now...) having given us his own take on songs by such artists as The Beatles, The Beach Boys and Nina Simone among others.

As a Bowie fan the prospect of a whole album of Bowie covers feels both apt and exciting, and I was relieved as I hit play to hear that the first track ('Oh! You Pretty Things' rejigged by Au Revoir Simone) wasn't playing the 'keep it the same' card of some other far-too-bloomin'-respectful tribute compilations. The Brookylyn three-piece deliver a sweet organ-lead take on the sing-a-long 1971 'Hunky Dory' track.

A handful of tracks aside, this compilation focuses its gaze on the late-seventies/early-eighties portion of Bowie's four decades worth of genre-hopping, it even has the smarts to warp 'Magic Dance' - from the cult classic Jim Henson film 'Labyrinth' - into a very surreal, stalkerish baby-beating dance track with French language vocals; it's a truly bonkers approach by Croatian Kelley Polar but it oddly works. Also from the eighties is a fantastic cover of 'Loving the Alien', a Bowie track I was never too keen on, here delivered with a spacey electro-dance twist that encapsulates that era's material style without resorting to parody.

Elsewhere there's a shimmering mix of 'Sound & Vision' by Matthew Dear with Rupert Bear and the Frog Song style backing vocals, a funky disco strut applied to 1979's 'Repetition' courtesy of The Emperor Machine and it all comes to a climax with Norwegian/Swedish jazz band The Thing's interpretative instrumental take on 'Life On Mars' (it sounds like a double bass wandering through children's birthday party preparations in a junkyard).

This is a pretty good collection of cover versions, mainly for the ammount of invention and imagination that has gone into redrafting, reshaping and producing these reworked Bowie tracks. A fitting tribute to the serial-coverer (I've used the word twice in one review, that makes it official) in his 61st year.

Words: Owain Paciuszko

Label: Rapster
Out: Now