A bunch of indie bands update The Cure on new album

While other bands are just dressing up like the Cure, here’s a bunch of people doing the opposite: trying to make the music world a little less ridiculous. And though the cultural barometer on them might be hovering around “begrudging respect” at the moment, who knows when that might come crashing back down to the “Let’s pretend we never listened to them” level, currently occupied by Kiss.

So in order to infuse a little modernity into the hairspray, there’s a whole 32 tracks of contemporary tribute on the two-disc Perfect As Cats: a tribute to The Cure which will be released on October 28 on Manimal Vinyl. The album benefits the invisible children foundation.

But didn’t I just hear about some Cure covers? Yes, but that was Scarlett Johansson covering “Boys Don’t Cry” for iTunes, to benefit the “Let’s Pretend I Can Sing” fund.

Indian Jewelry - A Walk

[Download it]

Indian Jewelry has done the impossible: a Cure cover that might be more sinister than Robert Smith. “The Walk”, a fundamentally creepy song with howling women and Japanese babies and night strolls through that part of the park your daddy told you not to walk down at night, is given a whole extra dimension of sketchiness when doctored by the ‘Jewelry. The recognizable synth lead appears randomly on a fuzzed-out guitar that sort of trails off at the end, more of a reminder than a theme. There’s crying cats and chanting and echoes and some late-90s NIN beats. It’s slightly more frightening than this image, which I imagine to appear at the climax:

[above: a juggalo]

Kaki King - Close To Me

Brooklyn-area guitarista Kaki King has taken on The Cure’s only worthwhile ballad, and while you think she might use some of her kick-ass chops to turn this sweet-yet-overdone song into something special, she instead breaks out the glockenspiel and does a pop song.

Perfect as Cats tracklist:

Disc 1=One
Xu Xu Fang, “Fascination Street”
Bat For Lashes, “A Forest”
Hecuba, “Killing An Arab”
Astrid Quay (of Winter Flowers), “The Caterpillar”
Indian Jewelry, “The Walk”
Rainbow Arabia, “Six Different Ways”
We Are The World, “Why Can’t I Be You?”
blackblack, “In Between Days”
Rio en Medio, “Pictures of You”
Gangi, “Fire In Cairo”
Joker’s Daughter, “Kyoto Song”
Aquaserge with Laure Briard, “10.15 Saturday Night” (in French)
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, “Dressing Up”
The Muslims, “Grinding Halt”
Voyager One, “M”
Ex-Reverie, “The Hanging Garden”
Jesu, “The Funeral Party”
Caroline Weeks (of Bat For Lashes), “The Drowning Man”
Devastations, “All Cats Are Gray”

Disc Two
The Dandy Warhols, “Primary”
Veil Veil Vanish, “The Upstairs Room”
Wolkfin (ex-Junior Senior), “Charlotte Sometimes”
Army Navy, “Jumping Someone Else’s Train”
Ich Bin Aiko, “A Strange Day”
Lemon Sun, “The Exploding Boy”
Corridor, “The Kiss”
Katrine Ottosen (CALLmeKAT), “The Love Cats”
Silver Summit, “A Night Like This”
Mariee Sioux, “Love Song”
Kaki King, “Close To Me”
Buddy, “Sugar Girl”
Les Bicyclettes Blanches, “Hot Hot Hot!”
Tara Busch, “Let’s Go To Bed”
Geneva Jacuzzi, “The Walk 2″
Black Hole Oscillators, “The Baby Screams”
Sarabeth Tucek, “Three Imaginary Boys”

Related posts:

1. Fingered: Indian Jewelry
2. Listen: Neon Indian
3. Listen: Flower Travellin Band cover of Black Sabbath
4. Listen: To Hip Hop Beating Itself to Death
5. King Khan & The Shrines, The Supreme Genius of King Khan, Vice

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