From Suicideisfine, a Latin-band tribute to MBV that was produced by a Spanish-language fanzine, comes this pretty, indie-folk version of "Cupid Come." Aroah (aka Irene Tremblay), a Spanish-born singer/songwriter whose mother is American, is Europe's finest Juliana Hatfield/Mary Lou Lord/Cat Power hybrid and, when she decides to invade the States, there are going to be a lot of lovelorn indie kids worshipping her every word.
It's pretty much de rigueur that, if you're in a punk or indie rock band, at some point you're going to cover TK. Off the top of my head, I can name at least eight such bands who have recorded it (I'm sure there are more) and about 12 different bands I've seen do it live. What's completely uninteresting about all of the TK covers rattling around in my head, is that all of them were pretty faithful to the original in sound, speed and overall punk feel—or as close to faithful as some of the more talent-free bands who've done it could muster. Enter minimalist French pop pioneer Dominique A and his rarely properly credited chanteuse collaborator Francoiz Breut. Empty your mind of the adjectives you once used to describe this song (rousing? angry? adamant? anarchic?), as Dominique A has turned it into a soft French-pop love duet that sounds eerily like freakin' "Dust in the Wind" in parts.
In my grand tradition of looking musical gift horses in the mouth, I long ignored the possibility that Lisa Germano (who lived in Bloomington, Indiana, during the same era as I) could actually be as talented as everyone said she was. I think I was biased by her stint as Mellencamp's fiddle player or something, which makes little sense to me, in retrospect, since I guess I'm sort of a Mellencamp fan. So I went along waiting on her periodically at the Uptown Cafe and never got a chance to tell her that I was a fan of her music, because I didn't know that I was or that I would be. A few years later, neither of us were in Bloomington anymore. She went off to California and I wound up in music retail in Chicago. In the fall of '96, a promo of her Excerpts From a Love Circus CD on 4AD arrived in the office and I found myself playing it on the sales floor pretty regularly and loving it. I finally got to see her live in '98 or so, and her performance was overwhelmingly beautiful. I talked to her before the show and told her I was happy to finally make it out to see her and she seemed generously appreciative. After the show, I felt like a pretty big idiot for not at least allowing myself to give her a chance back when tickets to her shows were $5 instead of $25, but I digress. Like her original songs, this track is dark, dense and textured and makes me wish I were really high right now listening to it. But I'm not. I have a job now. Must ... be ... responsible.
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