Fade Together (Avalanches Remix)
The original was a pretty wisp of a song in the first place, a
Beatlesque coo over halfhearted piano tinkles and
barely-there acoustic guitar. It's the single most sedate moment in the
entire Franz oeuvre, as if that even means anything at all. The
Avalanches usually take stuff like this and turn it into junkshop
cosmopolitanism, layering Egyptian jug-band drums under all the fey
whimpers. But here, they take a wisp and make it even wispier,
whittling Alex Kapranos's vocal down to a couple of muttered asides
repeated over and over and putting enough blissed-out reverb on the
piano to turn it into Robert Altman background noise. And then they
toss in vinyl-pop and ambient restaurant noise, and it ceases existence
as a song entirely and becomes an ephemeral snatch of found sound.
It's somehow simultaneously the most audacious and the most boring
thing they could've done with it, and I don't intend to listen to it
ever again.