Pitchfork

This cover of Castanets' "And the Swimming", the closing track on the upcoming album In the Vines, was recorded by another one-man-and-a-rotating-cast band, Phosphorescent, aka Matthew Houck, on a boat bar in the Hudson River. It's just Houck's raw guitar and perpetually wounded voice delivering Raymond Raposa's lyrics and halting melody, losing the heartbeat-steady pulse and the ethereal effects of the original. In their place, the boat crowd murmurs a quiet din, the hull sloshes against the waves, and a plane flies low through the last verse. These ambient noises, which at first just sound like the typical background for a field recording (the consequences of a live, outdoor performance), become their own peculiar music, as lovely and evocative as the song itself.

MP3:> Phosphorescent: "And the Swimming"
[from a forthcoming DVD companion to In the Vines; due in 2008 on Asthmatic Kitty]