Pitchfork Forkcast: New Music: Japancakes: "Only Shallow" (My Bloody Valentine cover) [MP3/Stream]

New Music: Japancakes: "Only Shallow" (My Bloody Valentine cover) [MP3/Stream]

Athens, Ga., instrumentalists Japancakes have set themselves a nearly impossible task. They're releasing an album covering My Bloody Valentine's classic Loveless. Kevin Shields poured more than two years and untold piles of money into the original, and a contemporary band on an indie budget-- even a band founded on the Terry Riley-like idea of a 45-minute D chord-- probably isn't going to be able to top it. In terms of P.R., this is brilliant stuff; Japancakes also have another album, Giving Machines, on the way October 9 via Darla.

What's more, their take on Loveless opener "Only Shallow" is actually pretty good. Instead of distortion, they give us twang, putting their typical pedal steel and cello in place of the original's high-pitched vocals (which were always more about sound than communicating their indecipherable lyrics anyway). As for the MBV version's ambient, organ-like coda, it's replaced here by rumbling piano. It was all enough to make me put Loveless back on the turntable, and that's only a bad thing if it's scratched. As Life Without Buildings once put it, "M-B-V M-B-V M-B-V more M-B-V hi-fi!"

MP3:> Japancakes: "Only Shallow"
[from Loveless; due 11/07/07 on Darla]