the stars eat your body

Girl­pants col­lec­tive profit margin rose six per­cent this quarter, which means, YEP, bonuses for everyone! Niina splurged and got her­self a per­sonal chef. Apprently the guy cooks a mean, all-vegan sauteed bean thread dish and can quote T.S. Eliot on com­mand. Not to be out­done, Ben got him­self a sec­re­tary that looks like the chick from Boris. Joel said he was going to use his money to grow out his beard…he’s an odd duck.

As for myself, I have the heavens above me and the moral law within me, what more could I want? Some INDIE RAWK maybe? A guest DJ spot in Miami? Well yes. But actu­ally, I decided to take a long-overdue sab­bat­ical. Free from Ben’s point­edly omi­nous dead­line reminders and Joel’s office tantrums (I heard he pumped some Joan of Arc and in a fit of rage dumped coffee all over the sec­re­tary), I flew to our Car­ribean estate, run­ning up the Girl­pants expense account on Mojitos and pros­ti­tutes. And so I return to you refreshed, only slightly worse for wear and ready to get down to business.

Covers. Mmmm. Covers are like choco­late. They’re fun, a little indul­gent and they come from Colombia, mostly. Here are a couple of covers that ennoble the originals:

I guess Final Fan­tasy is some dude that does pro­duc­tion and arrange­ment work for Mon­tréal bands, but here he’s cov­ering everyone’s favorite harpie Joanna Newsom and her emo anthem “Peach Plum Pear.” He retains the stately string plucks of the orig­inal, but sub­si­tutes Newsom’s grandma-meets-four-year-old style with his own rich, under­stated vocals. The whole affair sounds almost kind of goth, espe­cially in the second half of the song when he throws all sorts of cold synth strings at it. Free from Newsom’ slightly unhinged, if endearing voice, the com­po­si­tion really shines on its own terms.

Petra Haden and Bill Frissel’s cover of Coldplay’s “Yellow,” on the other hand, is exactly the oppo­site. Fea­tured on the Girlpants-approved show the O.C. awhile back, this oth­er­wise for­get­table slice of post-Britpop pan­dering glows with new warmth. Haden’s inno­cent and beatific voice does most of the work here. Like Par­menides’ account of exis­tence, it’s a form with no edges, per­fect in pro­por­tion and pure. Accented by some glit­tering har­monics that skip across its sur­face, the song evokes an uncon­di­tional, moonlit kind of hap­pi­ness, the kind that nei­ther Chris Martin nor his clumsy lyrics could truly convey.