As luck would have it, we were in the middle of remixing Headlights’ “Put us Back Together Right” for their upcoming remix album and their track “Cherry Tulips” went to #1 on elbo.ws. Needless to say it has been quite a Headlights week for us. We were really happy to see them at number one because we are actually pretty good friends and it is great to get to cover one of our friend’s songs! Here is what Mark had to say about the track:

“We all spend a lot of time trying to figure out what songs are about.  My friend, Lisa, got all bent up cause tulips don’t grow on trees.  I said “The singer is using her artistic license.  She is so in love with this person that she wants to all the cherry trees to blossom fat red tulips.”  This woman, Erin Fein, is pining all night for Cherry Tulips.  But, there are no such things - she is overcome with a reckless abandon, and there is an earth shattering hurricane of
cuteness.  What will she do?  She wants the whole sea! And if she does in fact get it, where will the cherry dolphins swim? 

Structurally, the tune follows a straight forward major chord progression with a minor 6 thrown in for good measure.  The middle of the tune is host to a turnaround at the 4th and 5th then back to the refrain.  Combine that with the 108bpm March in double time and its aural heroine time.  I flirted for a while with dropping this cover into the relative minor, as an example of how chords account for 50% of the narrative in a lyric, but I was feeling bittersweet about our covers project coming due, so I scrapped it.  On a production level, this tune comes closest to the Beach House song we covered earlier in the project, real gooey and wet, all verbed out and what not.   Our version is sped up, sort of, to 120.  The feel of the song totally changed when the drums were cut to half time - that’s probably the most dramatic change in the song.  Oh, and the original doesn’t have a telephone solo in it either!  Thank you, Headlights, for writing such a lovely song for us to cover. Maybe I’ll write a song called Cherry Dolphins. hmmm.”

As I said, I was just putting the finishing touches on the remix as this one went number one so it was very easy for me to transition over to the new track. I actually didn’t listen to the original before I started working on the cover. I figured remixing them would give me enough of the sound I needed to create the backdrop for the cover. Mark sent me guitar and vocals and I built a simple little pop song around them. This is probably the most straightforward of all of our covers and is actually probably the most “kindercore” song ruby isle has ever recorded. Mark’s little addition of “Road to Nowhere” was  a pleasant suprise to me as Mark and I grew up listening to Talking Heads records together. It was really fun to throw in that little treat. Actually, ever cover in this series actually references another song aside from the cover we are doing. If you are bored it could be a fun little game to go back and listen to all of them and find the secrets…

 Here is this week’s: Ruby Isle - Cherry Tulips (headlights cover).mp3

Posted by dan on 21 Jan 2008 at 06:11 pm

2 Comments »

This week’s number one on elbo.ws is Destroyer’s “Foam Hands” I don’t know what this Dan Bejar character is putting in the bloggers’ cereal, but they sure love him!!! The first song we did in this project was by his new band Hello, Blue Roses. That was only three weeks ago! The new song is much more of a songwriter song than the HBR song, but we still had to take some artistic license with it to make it a pop jam. Again, this whole thing with Dan Bejar and Destroyer is weird because our friend Rob Carmichael put out a destroyer record and so did our other friend Phil Waldorf . Someday that guy is going to find us and kill us.

 
Image by Aaron Lemay

Here is what Mark had to say about the track:

“Strong pop doesn’t waste time, I always say, and FOAM HANDS begins straight away. It’s a pretty straight forward v/c/v/c/v/c progression in the key of E. The tempo is, as in Black Mountain TYRANTS, drifts somewhere around 80 bpm. The instrumentation is your basic 4 piece rock setup, but the singer does whistle in the final moments of the song. It’s the cryptic lyrics which really make this song stand out, and give it a surreal quality against the simple, albeit hook laden, musical backdrop.”

This one was a little different in its construction because Mark only sent me the guitar and vocal to start out with. He recorded it really early in the morning so he had to sing it really quiet an ocatve lower. In order for me to hear it in the correct octave, he pitched it so it sounded like a chipmunk. This was really annoying and made my first attempt at writing for it pretty awful. I sent Mark what I had and he somehow extracted some magic out of my hooks. He took what I called the “Journey Part” and made it into a really great reprise. We found some drums that worked and we twisted a simple bassline I had constructed around to make it a little less direct. Finally to top it off Mark’s roomate laid down that ripping guitar solo which really put it over the top.

This one became more of an indie pop song than our other efforts in this project and I am really excited about how catchy the chorus is. We hope you enjoy it.

And we give you: Ruby Isle - Foam Hands (Destroyer Cover).mp3.

Posted by dan on 13 Dec 2007 at 10:11 am

No Comments »

Here it is, week two of our elbo.ws cover experiment. This week #1 on the elbo.ws what’s hot track list is Aly, Walk With Me by Raveonettes.

 
Illustration by Aaron Lemay

Here is what Mark had to say about the original song: ”The structure of the tune is 3 singing verses interrupted by a spaghetti western guitar hook and 2 solos of feedback and distortion. A reverbed out drum loop and farfisa organ make up the rhythm section, with a chime or triangle on the downbeat of every few measures. The instrumentation recalls of the self titled SUICIDE record. A parallel harmony follows the female vocal as she asks this Aly person to walk around different cities with her. Lyrically, this is a tune about obsession and unrequited desire.  “Aly, Walk With Me” runs 100 beats per minute and is in the key of G sharp minor.”

Here is my take on what we did with it: I really loved working on this song and I think it is one of the better tracks we have recorded. Mark initially sent me a vocal track, the crunchy lead and the keyboard hook on the chorus. Mark sped the track up to 126bpm and and changed the key to Fmin.

I listened to the tracks at work and thought about what I might do all day so when I got home the process was really fast and fluid. I programmed the drums first, a repetitive straight 4 on the floor. I thought the song needed a continuous beat to keep in the spirit of the original, but I added some tom and rim shot fills at key moments to keep it interesting. I then added bass following Mark’s crunchy lead but I added an arpeggio on the chorus bass to distinguish it from the verse. Then the vocoder. I have been using vocoder more and more lately and on this one we decided to use my vocoded “aly, walk with me” as the chorus vocal hook even though the real song didn’t have it. I think it works for this clubby version of the track but it may not have served the original well. I filled out the track with the arpeggiated keyboard and the pads in the background and sent my 5 new tracks up to Mark. Mark always blows me away with his additions at this point and this one really got me. He completely rearranged the track and added the crazy guitar solos. Aaron added his drums and we cut and pasted some parts over the phone until we got the arrangement exactly how we wanted it.

We wrapped the whole thing up in about a day. In reality, the actual work time was a lot less because a lot of it was spent talking on the phone and uploading/downloading files. This one was really fast because the song itself was so fun to work with.

 So, here it is: Ruby Isle - Aly Walk With Me (Raveonettes Cover).mp3

Posted by dan on 28 Nov 2007 at 01:05 pm

2 Comments »

Last Friday, Ruby Isle was in the middle of recording our new record and were looking for some inspiration so we decided to take whatever track was number one on elbo.ws and cover it. It turned out it was a song by Hello, Blue Roses called Shadow Falls. Hello, Blue Roses has that guy Dan Bejar in it from Destroyer and The New Pornographers. This is conincdental because Ryan and I had a friend named Rob that had a label called Catsup Plate that put out a Destroyer record. Then our friend Phil Waldorf put out another Destroyer record on Misra. Then things got all out of control and they signed to Merge and became rock stars.

Illustration by Aaron Lemay

On to the song… It was a pretty easy song to cover because it is very simple. Basically a chorus with some verselike parts that go in and out. Our take on it is VERY different, I hope we don’t offend HBR because we mean no harm. It was just supposed to be a fun send up of a current indie fave. Keep in mind we recorded and mixed it in about 5 hours. So here it is: Ruby Isle - Shadow Falls (Hello, Blue Roses), ENJOY!!!

Posted by dan on 20 Nov 2007 at 11:46 am

5 Comments »