This triple vinyl release, Life’s What You Make It, follows up on Instant Replay (2019) and The Self Preservation Society (2018). Again curated by Mark Constantine, the co-founder of Lush, it features 30 folk-based reworks of numbers spanning pop, folk, and rock originally released from 1981 to 1991. Some are faithful to the source, others more radical. While some are more effective than others, they all demonstrate enthusiasm for celebrating the original material with often unexpected results.
The era was, of course, marked by a cocktail of New Wave, synth-pop and the emergence of grunge, and all are represented here by names both familiar and obscure. It opens in 1985 with Afro Celt Sound System taking on Dream Academy’s buoyant Life In A Northern Town, investing it with their jubilant African rhythms and percussion, and is followed by fiddle player Lisa Knapp, with a suitably stately reading of Thinner Than Air by The Cocteau Twins, her violin giving way to ethereal vocals in the second half.
One of several folk luminaries on the collection, Jackie Oates teases out the folk DNA of The Cure’s Untitled to breathtaking effect, her achingly sad vocals accompanied by dark cello and keys, returning later in the project for a hypnotic, fiddle-pulsing, clopping percussion breathily sung sway through Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me To The End Of Love.
And staying with the folk elite, Eliza & Martin Carthy bring a traditional folk interpretation to Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam (the album uses the title Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam, as retitled when covered by Nirvana at their 1993 MTV Unplugged concert) by Scottish indie shoegazers The Vaselines while Eliza also takes a solo spot with Tom Robinson’s Cabin Boy, keeping the urgency but with the arrangement imbuing far darker tone.
Folk’s first (extended) family is also represented by two tracks from Marry Waterson, the first a pulsing strings, heavy sunny pop rework of Propaganda’s Duel, the second a faithful but more sinuous cover of Eurythmics’ Here Comes The Rain Again. Teddy Thompson flies the flag for an equally iconic dynasty with two contrasting choices, a Chris Isaak-like shadowy twangsome prowl through Kirsty MacColl’s Fifteen Minutes and a brooding reimaging of the Tina Turner hit What’s Love Got To Do With It that conjures an atmosphere akin to Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight which is itself covered by Ben Murray and Richard Evans and reconstructed for wheezing accordion, skeletal piano and strings drone.
Martha Tilston absolutely owns Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting, while Stealing Sheep effectively do their thing by transmuting Blister In The Sun by The Violent Femmes. Better known as Duotone and part of The Imagined Village, experimentalist cellist Barney Morse-Brown steps into the spotlight with a driving swagger through Robert Palmer’s Simply Irresistible and a moody, spooked cello drone stalk through Nirvana’s Come As You Are.
An Irish Traditional and blues singer and flautist, and member of The Breath and contributor to The Afro Celt Sound System, Ríoghnach Connolly makes four appearances, the first in her own name with a lovely piano and strings arrangement of Paul Brady’s The Island shrouded in Celtic mist, and then as part of Honeyfeet with a suitably lazing take on The Style Council’s Long Hot Summer and, crafting similar jazzy toned vibe, a second Eurythmics track, Paint A Rumour, the fourth seeing her join Palm Skin Productions for a hiccupping rhythm, sensually sung and breathy Carib-tinted It Ain’t What You Do (It’s The Way That It Do It) by Funboy Three and Bananarama. Palm Skin Productions also returning for a suitably chilled out, lysergic float through The Orb’s Fluffy Little Clouds with spoken vocals wafting in and out.
Rounding things off, elsewhere, there are contributions from Wattle & Daub (not the Illinois folk duo) with electronica, a deadpan spoken version of Spandau Ballet’s I Don’t Need This Pressure On, father and daughter team Da Da La La in synth-funk mood with Talk Talk’s The Party’s Over, Lockwatchers, aka Susannah Henry and Rhodri Marsden, with their angelic shimmering 2020 recording of The Las There She Goes and a bleeping electro-pop remodelling of Madness’s The Opium Eaters, Marsden also being part of Beagle & Amalthea giving Soho’s funky groove Hippychick a George Harrison-like Eastern vibe sheen.
Transglobal Underground and The Imagined Village member Sheema Mukherjee gets to step away from her sitar to sing on a sweepingly orchestrated cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Everywhere. By contrast, Fibreglass trim the running time of Metallica’s doom-laden epic Enter Sandman in half and gives it an electro motorik going over. Also far removed from the folk field, The Duloks, a female trio with keys and electric drums, come out of retirement for a catchy pop-friendly fizzed-up cover of The B52’s Wig.
The collection ends with, first, West Yorkshire’s Rosie Doonan, another of a well-established folk lineage, and, accompanied by a circling piano riff and click track-like percussion, here smokily interpreting Suzanne Vega’s Small Blue Thing and finally, Julie Tippetts, an artist whose career dates back to the 1960s, first finding fame singing Wheels On Fire with The Brian Auger Trinity as Julie Driscoll and later, married to progressive jazzman Keith Tippett, as part of Centipede while going on to make her own jazz-infused music, bringing her experience and glowing talent to bear on a narcotic second Talk Talk track, the titular Life’s What You Make It.
Whether you dip in and out or swallow it whole, this is an intoxicating collection that again reminds us that music is only limited by the imagination you bring to it.
‘Life’s What You Make It’ is out May 27th on Lush
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