Cover Girls, Vol. 2

For someone who grew up on a yacht for most of her life, Heather Nova sure does have excellent taste in music. Much of this is due to her parents, whose records entertained Heather and her two siblings while they sailed the ocean.

In 1998, Heather covered Jimmy Cliff’s 1972 classic ‘Many Rivers To Cross’ with crystal-clear precision. Accompanied with just a mellow guitar strum and the weeping of a single cello, Heather laces the song with melancholy and manages to the convey the longing and hopelessness of a lost traveler.

I am not too familiar with the bulk of Regina Lund’s catalog, but I was pleasantly surprised with her rendition of ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’ from her album Year Zero. The song was of course originally made famous by Tina Turner in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, but Regina’s take is much softer and is capable of hypnosis, which I assure you - is not a bad thing. Regina takes command of your mood and makes you feel as if you’re floating. Her voice bears noticeable traces of her Finnish accent, but adds to the song’s newfound fragility. 

A song recorded for the Sean Penn / Michelle Pfeiffer film, I Am Sam, Aimee’s rendition can be found on the international pressing. Why it wasn’t included on the domestic release, I’ll never know.
 
Sunny and upbeat, Aimee give the song a very jubilant feel, somehow possessing a knack for giving her cover songs new life. This version is blessed with modern production which cleans up the rough edges of its predecessor, but is thankfully not overdone.     
 

On Glee, the 1998 debut album from the unique and quirky musical project called Bran Van 3000, you’ll find ‘Cum On Feel The Noize,’ the song originally performed by the band Slade (and later made more popular by Quiet Riot and then Oasis).

BV3K members Jayne Hill and Sara Johnston sing on the interesting take, which sounds as if it was soaked in water and then wrung out and pinned on a clothesline, draining it of its original polish, but saturating it enough to provide it with some pleasant warbling. It’s a definitive description of much of the album actually, as most of the songs possess unconventional structures and too many audio effects which occasionally muddy it up.

Downloads:

Heather Nova - Many Rivers To Cross
Regina Lund - We Don’t Need Another Hero
Aimee Mann - Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Bran Van 3000 - Cum On Feel The Noize