Covers are delicate breeds, some are very close to the original, others depart from the original to the point the song is not recognizable anymore; but at this point is it still a cover and does it do justice to the song?
I recently heard this cover of Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’ by Los Angeles electronic duo Poolside and really liked it,… it captures so well the melody and adds something else at the same time, a certain mellowness, laziness, like a long summer afternoon under the sun. They have totally reworked the song into a long electronica-synth jam with infectious dance beats and dreamy, almost sedated, vocals.
I saw Poolside about a month ago when they opened for the Rapture at the Music Box, and I had right away noticed the original cover. This is what Jeffrey Paradise (the half of the duo) said to Spinner:
‘We're both big fans of Neil Young, and one day we were in the studio and talking about potential cover songs. I mentioned to Filip [Nikolic], 'Hey, why don't we cover a Neil Young song?' and Filip was like 'Cool, I know 'Harvest Moon' on guitar,' and so we just started jamming it came out really nicely. Eventually we even took the guitar out to make it even more a departure from the original’
Listen to this surprising cover: http://soundcloud.com/poolside_music/poolside-harvest-moon