The reviews keep rolling in…. This week, InTraffik.com’s Deltron 3030 pits ROBOTANISTS’s Shapes and Variations up against Peter Gabriel’s new covers album, Scratch my Back... Robotanists emerge victorious! Falling in line with artists like Jeff Buckley, Gary Jules, and Cat Power in their ability to craft a cover that exceeds the original!
Here are few highlights…
“Where Peter Gabriel failed [with his covers album, Scratch My Back] , the Robotanists succeed… it is very rare when a cover song surpasses the original. Amazingly enough on their upcoming EP [Shapes and Variations] the Robotanists manage to pull off this trick seven times.
Seven times they reinvent a popular song. Seven times they take ownership of the covered material.
I hate to give someone overflowing credit, but not only do they take ownership but they do it with songs that are part of the popular zeitgeist. It’s as if they shouted out “Hey Gabriel, it’s one thing to cover Bon Iver’s “Flume” but try covering Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind.” It takes balls to do that..and balls are what the Roboantists have. Balls and beautiful lead vocals.”
“Joe Jackson’s classic ["Are you really Going Out With Him"] gets a gender bend and couldn’t sound sexier. “Dance, Dance, Dance” is reworked to the point if you didn’t know any better you’d assume Lykke Li was covering them. Seriously go compare the two.“
“…the band was challenged to make the most overplayed songs listen-able again. They rose to the challenge and then some.”
Our cover of the Black Keys song “All You Ever Wanted” began back in 2008 while we were recording our album CLOSE DOWN THE WOODS…
We started working on arranging various covers to perform live, when The Black Keys were about to release their album ATTACK AND RELEASE. To coincide with their album release Paste Magazine encouraged fans to cover a song from the album and make a video… this was our submission. We quickly threw together a demo version of this song and created a video from the Prelinger Archives and to our surprise we won!
Daniel subsequently got a shiny new Gibson guitar and we got some kudos from the band and their label out of it, which was pretty cool!
Fast forward to the summer of 2009 when we decided to officially put out a covers record… this was immediately at the top of the list to get re-arranged and recorded properly. So here it is, with the original “video of the day” we made for PASTE Magazine, with the brand spakin’ new audio that appears on SHAPES AND VARIATIONS!!!
Stay tuned for more videos from ROBOTANISTS’ SHAPES AND VARIATIONS, coming soon!
We just got our first review of SHAPES AND VARIATIONS!!!!!!
LABuzzBlog was the fist to review ROBOTANISTS new covers album SHAPES AND VARIATIONS, raving
“Robotanists do a great job of creating the soundtrack to your life in LA and all the grey sadness and epic-ness that comes along with that.”
Some song by song highlights include:
“Never Tear Us Apart” is “the stand-out track… Aside for this being a great song to begin with, the Robotanists give it a sweet and soulful makeover, complete with Casio tones, driving drums, and a lonely and powerful guitar solo. The song comes crashing down at the end like the INXS version never did, but you always expected it to. Effects and all – they find the soul of this song and expose it for what it is, a heart-wrenching song about the pain of loving so much it hurts.”
“Are You Really Going Out With Her” “is a realistic soundscape to hipster heartbreak, and one you’re going to want to play over and over.”
“Exiled State of Mind” “is soft and dreamy, and the vocals are as lightly refreshing and beautiful as Los Angeles rain… a nice, sentimental song for when you finally move out of LA and want to remember all the places you drove in your car.”
“Glass In Your Headlights” is a “magical version [of Phillip Glass' "Glassworks" ]… This is really a song you can get lost in and float away.”
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Last summer while we were touring relentlessly, we decided to make a covers record whenever we had a spare moment. We thought it would only take us a few weeks… we were wrong, but its almost here!
“SHAPES AND VARIATIONS is a collection of covers, reharmonized and rearranged to paint an aural portrait of all that we love about Los Angeles.
L.A. possesses a certain auspicious melancholy that some people don’t tap into or even sense. Yes, it’s always sunny and warm, but the truth is thousands of people migrate here following their dreams, only to return to where they came from. Some of us landed here very much broken, but found solace amidst all of those things that people leave behind when they move back home, because it didn’t work out.
All of those abandoned hopes and dreams and heartaches can still be felt here, and with those things in mind, we’ve taken what ever sunshine existed from songs by Bryan Adams, Joe Jackson, Lykke Li, Jay Z and a few others, and replaced it with our own warmth and pulse.
Each song tells a new story born from the dreams of another.” ~ ROBOTANISTS
LISTEN to the first track on the record, our Los Angeles inspired cover of Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind”… we call it “EXILED STATE OF MIND”
Also included on the record are…. “Are You Really Going out With Her?” (Joe Jackson), “All You Ever Wanted” (The Black Keys), “Never Tear Us Apart” (INXS), “Dance Dance Dance” (Lykke Li), and a few more, all of which have been re-harmonized, re-lyric-ized, rearranged and overall reworked.
SHAPES AND VARIATIONS was initially going to be a digital-only release available worldwide via OVERHEAD RECORDS (on 04.06.10), but we decided to make a VERY SMALL quantity of hand numbered physical CDs that will be available at our online store (Pre-Orders Only Until 3.30.10) and and at shows.
CLICK HERE for a list of links to our digital retailers. FREE companion liner notes for the physical CD will also be available online after 04.06!!!
Here are a few PHOTOS from the studio and our time making Shapes and Variations!
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