Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds isn't the easiest act to cover, but on her rendition on "We No Who U R," Cold Specks gets it right.
Cold Specks, also known as Al Spx, transforms the 2013 single from Cave's Push The Sky Away into a borderline gospel cover. The Toronto singer-songwriter brightens the song up with a fuller arrangement and beautiful vocal performance. Spx's version will be released as a B-Side to her next single, "Bodies At Bay," off of her Sept. 1 release Neuroplasticity.
In a recent interview with Paste Magazine, Spx talked about the album. "The title implies an aesthetic change," she said. "I think my musical taste expanded over the last couple of years. When you tour behind a folk record, it just becomes boring. I didn't enjoy it as much as I did at first. I realized that I wanted to be more fun on stage. I wanted to enjoy myself day in and day out. In order to do that I needed to have playful material. I needed to be more adventurous."
Her debut album, 2012's I Predict A Full Expulsion, was a bit different from what the singer concocted for the follow-up. "I found that the first record was a deeply personal record that reflected a period of my life that was very real," Spx said. "But by the time I started touring it that had passed. I felt a bit like a fraud. So I decided to remove myself from the songs in a way, and I created a character and started writing songs for that character."
Listen to Spx's version of Nick Cave's "We No Who U R" below.
