Brooklyn dance-punk institution !!! has been going for about 25 years now, and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. Last year, !!! released an EP called Certified Heavy Kats. Today, they’ve followed that with a new two-song single. This time, they’re not doing their own songs. Instead, they’ve taken a couple of mellow radio classics and twisted them up into unrecognizable shapes.
One of !!!’s new tracks is their take on “Man On The Moon,” R.E.M.’s impressionistic 1992 ode to Andy Kaufman. They’ve also dropped their own version of Tracy Chapman’s 1988 breakout “Fast Car.” There are no acoustic guitars to be heard on these two covers. Instead, !!! have turned both songs into funky, synthy party-music throwdowns.
In a press release, !!!’s Nic Offer says:
R.E.M. was known as the killer house party band in Athens, years before they became MTV darlings. We re-imagined “Man on the Moon” as something they would play at those house parties, in the thick of the James Brown/Ohio Players sample era. The goal was to make “Fast Car” sound even faster. Something u would play in a FAST FUCKING CAR. The verses are the bitter small town feel of it all and the chorus is the fast car on the open highway — into a night of possibilities….
Check out both of those covers below.
!!!’s versions of “Man On The Moon” and “Fast Car” are out now on Warp.
