Last week I made a conscious decision to start reading every future email that I would receive. I decided to start from a clean slate by clearing out every single email that was festering my inbox. It seemed like a great idea at the time because I was reading everything within the first couple of days. Let’s just say experiment didn’t last too long, because I have about 100 unread emails right now. This proved advantageous for the simple reason that I actually found some decent listening material.
One of these was a Grizzly Bear cover by the Toronto trio Born Ruffians. I’ve seen the name tossed around, but have never listened to them yet for myself. It’s an interesting take on “Knife” as they’ve managed to turn such a somber sounding track into a catchy pop song. Listen to the track below and look out for the band’s full length to be released in the fall on Warp Records. Here’s an excerpt as to why the group decided to cover the track:
We didn’t really get together and say: ‘hey let’s start doing a cover of Knife’, but sometimes in practice we just play other bands’ songs that we like, or goof around just for fun. (We often do a jam-band version of the Brokeback Mountain theme). I think Warp had just given us a copy of the Yellow House promo, and we all had listened to it and “Knife” was definitely one of the stand-out tracks for us.
Luke and Mitch had seen Grizzly Bear before we were even on Warp, and were fans. Luke listened to the album a lot in his room and figured “Knife” sort of sounded like a 60’s rhythm and blues song. He played around with it a bit and then I think next practice, we were just kind of fiddling around and he started playing it and we followed him. It sounded pretty good after like one or two times through and we realized it was a cover we could actually pull off and play live, and everybody who heard it seemed to like it. It just happened really naturally. Also, we collectively think that Grizzly Bear is one of the most exciting bands today.
Born Ruffians | “Knife (Grizzly Bear Cover)”
Grizzly Bear | “Knife”
This actually a nice segue into some really great news regarding Grizzly Bear, as it was announced on Pitchfork recently that the group have been tapped to open a healthy amount of American dates with the lovely Feist. How did this pairing come about? I have no idea, but I couldn’t be more excited as Yellow House was my favorite album of last year and Feist’s The Reminder will definitely make my top 10. I missed the last time the group made it’s way to Atlanta, so this will make up for that tenfold. Here are the following U.S. dates:
Feist + Grizzly Bear:
06-08 Northampton, MA – Calvin Theatre
06-09 Boston, MA – Berklee Performance Center
06-13 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
06-14 Greensboro, NC – Carolina Theatre
06-15 Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse
06-20 Minneapolis, MN – Pantages Theatre
06-22 Boulder, CO – Boulder Theatre
06-24 Seattle, WA – Moore Theatre
06-25 Portland, OR – TBA
06-27 San Francisco, CA – The Fillmore
06-29 Los Angeles, CA – The Wiltern
06-30 Solana Beach, CA – Belly Up
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I feel ya on the e-mail thing. I have 966 unread right now in the blog inbox. Jeez.
I hate this cover. Like both bands and the original song but geeze this irks me.