Listening to...

weird Cure covers. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but over the past few weeks, I've come across all of these on various music blogs:

The gorgeous, super-mopey Plainsong gets turned into something like, perhaps, Fleetwood Mac with a vocoder by someone called Migala...and it kinda works.

Someone named -M- (not the "Pop Muzik" guy) does a French (I think) vocal on Close To Me... which is fine... but the real embarassment is that he/she/it shows just how close the backing track is to George Michael's "Faith."

Boys Don't Cry gets its rough edges smoothed down into sighing acoustic coffee house schmaltz by someone named Jamie Lancaster, with the result ending up somewhere between the Style Council and Everything But The Girl at a Ramada in Reno.

Someone named Katie Melua gives Just Like Heaven a similar treatment. This reminds me of Frente's semi-hit version of New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" from a few years back.

There's also this downbeat fake reggae version of Love Song by 311 from the crappy movie 50 First Dates.

And finally, Popchor Berlin does a full choir version of Grinding Halt, which doesn't really come together as well as their spooky version of the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now." Something like "Other Voices" or "Charlotte Sometimes" would have been a more obvious choice.

P.S. Cowboy Junkies did their thing to Seventeen Seconds on their recent covers EP, turning it into a hushed, bluesy dirge. I like it.

Update: Under The Covers has Luka Bloom pointlessly turning In Between Days into some sort of Irish folk song.