July 27, 2005

!!! : Take Ecstasy With Me/Get Up

Excitedly-named punk-funkers take cover. Two, in fact

Cover versions can go either way really. At one end of the spectrum there’s various Pop Idols scuttling over some well-heeled classics with Robson and Jerome-ish knob-itude, and on the other end there’s the likes of Jeff Buckley, who could make grown men choke on their falafel while he intoned the last verse of ‘Hallelujah’. Updating The Magnetic Fields’ oceanic, Bollywood-groping groover ‘Take Ecstasy With Me’ – previously a much coveted rarity from their 1993 ‘Holiday’ album for those who liked their drug consumption to come with a side helping of manufacturing-noise pop and lush echo-vocals – into something a little more bombastic and club-friendly, then, sounds like a recipe for a potential disaster of Dirt-Bravery-weener-out-at-Glasto, um, proportions. But who could predict that NYC’s erratic disco punkers !!! would turn Stephin Merritt’s swarthy Ode To An Ibizan Gurn into a comedown-caressing classic that makes you want to hug everyone and grind your teeth into oblivion? Their updating of Nate (brother of Snoop) Dogg’s ‘Get Up’, meanwhile, is a lesson in how to do the whole white-boy-hanging-in-the-ghetto thing. Shapeshifting into a funky groove machine (without making you reach for the Tylenol) is quite a feat, and, if not as appealingly grandiose as their Fields cover, it still makes you want to throw your hands in the air and make ironic post-rave boxes.

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