Cassandra Jenkins – “It’s You” (Animal Collective & Vashti Bunyan Cover)

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Cassandra Jenkins – “It’s You” (Animal Collective & Vashti Bunyan Cover)

The week before Christmas, Under The Radar announced Covers Of Covers, a compilation celebrating the magazine’s 20th anniversary and benefitting Sweet Relief. The concept — artists beloved by Under The Radar cover songs by artists who’ve been on the cover of Under The Radar — yielded fruit such as Grandaddy reinterpreting Metric’s “Blindness” and EMA putting their own spin on Modest Mouse’s “Trailer Trash.”

Today they’ve released two more advance tracks from the comp. Cassandra Jenkins has turned Animal Collective and Vashti Bunyan’s Prospect Hummer ballad “It’s You” into something resembling her own sublime An Overview On Phenomenal Nature but with extra harp. Meanwhile Peter Bjorn & John have recorded the Divine Comedy’s “Songs Of Love.” Peter Morén says the choice of material was partially driven by his love for the BBC series Father Ted, for which the Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon wrote the theme song.

Here’s Jenkins with more on her AnCo cover:

Covers are a great way to experiment with sounds, palettes, and people I want to work with. Harpist Rebecca El-Saleh and I did some e-mail recording during quarantine and this was the first time we got to play in a room together, with Zubin Hensler engineering. I had been listening to a lot of Curtis Mayfield at the time and loved some of the harp usage in his recording, and felt like the harp was one of the few acoustic instruments that could capture something similar to the original recording. Michael Coleman added some piano, and I used field recordings from the house where I’ve been living for a good part of this year.

Hear both tracks below.

Covers Of Covers is out 3/4 via American Laundromat. Pre-order it here.

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