Radical Face - Covers, Volume 1 „Lady Covers“

Spätestens seit seinem „The Family Tree“-Opus (3 Alben und 4 EPs), das er zwischen 2010 und 2016 in die Tat umsetzte, wissen wir, dass Ben Cooper ein übergeordnetes Konzept zu schätzen weiß. Sein aktuelles Projekt verrät über seinen Titel eigentlich schon alles, lässt uns aber im Unklaren darüber, was zukünftig noch in dieser Serie zu erwarten ist. Dazu Cooper:

I gave myself a theme with these covers, as I always tend to do: I am only covering women, and I am basing my choices on voices/personalities that have struck me over the years. Most of these are nostalgic.

Auf „Covers, Volume 1 ‚Lady Covers‘“ schlüpft Cooper als Radical Face in die Rollen bekannter Sängerinnen (Dolores O’Riordan von The Cranberries, Cyndi Lauper, Lana Del Rey, Dolly Parton, Sinéad O’Connor und Elaine Paige) und macht deren Songs zu den seinen. Sehr amüsant auch seine Aussage zum Konzept der „Plattencovern“: 

Another rule I've made for this series is: for the artwork, I will do my best to look like each of the women I'm covering. I do not have the bone structure for drag (an artist friend of mine once described me, while working on my portrait, as a human potato … hahaha), so all of these will be a stretch. But I think laughing at yourself is important. Two of these in particular are going to be a horror show.

Über die Beweggründe zur Auswahl der sechs Künstlerinnen bzw. Songs gibt er u.a. auf seiner Homepage ausführlich Auskunft, so dass wir die EP, die leider nur digital erhältlich ist, hier mithilfe der Videos und der Kommentare von Ben Cooper hier kurz vorstellen können:

The first one I'm putting up is from The Cranberries, as an homage to Dolores O'Riordan. I was really sad when I read the news that she'd passed. The Cranberries were a private band for me. Some might call it a guilty pleasure. I came up in rock music. Bands like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins were such a huge influence, and a large part of why I picked up a guitar. (…) It was all my friends listened to by the time we were starting high school. But on my own, when no one was around, I also liked my pretty songs. Some of them were radio-friendly and therefore not cool. This is where The Cranberries lived for me. And while they were most known for Zombie at the time, I really loved songs like Linger, Dreams, Ode To My Family, Dream My Dreams. And I adored her voice. Very Irish, and it always felt so raw and direct to me. It still does.

Goonies is one of my big childhood movies. I remember renting the VHS multiple times in elementary school, alongside Don Bluth animations (Secret of Nimh and Land Before Time especially), Chipmunk Adventure, Transformers and Return To Oz. I still love all of these. But one thing that really stood out to me from Goonies was the music, and especially the theme song. That track eventually led me to “She's So Unusual” and everything beyond, but it's where I started with Cyndi. Sometimes it's nice to go back to the beginning. I also liked that I was genuinely stumped about how to cover this one at first. I enjoyed the challenge.

I really like Lana Del Rey, though. I only heard about her because of backlash. My initiation to her music was other people complaining and saying she was some kind of fraud. So I got curious and looked her up. The first song that popped up on Youtube was Video Games and I liked it right off. It had a lot of the things I enjoy in music. It was moody, the chords, arrangements and melodies were clever, and the vocals had a lot of personality. It was the first “Radio Pop” kind of artist I'd heard in a long time that I listened to the song more than once. So I got the record, and again to my surprise, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed how it was simultaneously melodramatic and bored. It was very left-field for the kind of records I was into at the time, which was fun.

For this one I picked “Jolene” by Dolly Parton. Dolly is a hell of a songwriter, both in what she's written for herself and for others. I think she's got a really cool sense of melody, and she's the type of professional we don't much see anymore. Always seemed genuinely kind as well. (…) I also noticed, once I stripped this down to its chords, that it reminded me of some music from old fantasy films. Like the soundtrack of “The Last Unicorn”. So I decided to push that stuff a bit with the piano and mellotrons. 

I first heard Sinead's record “I do not want what I haven't got” because my older sister had the tape. We were not well-off and there weren't a lot of records to pick from in the household, so I started listening to this album just for some variety. But it wasn't long before I got really into it, and really started to love her voice. I was maybe 11 years old at the time, and already into pretty heavy music like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins. So this was another guilty pleasure type of album – something I listened to when no one was around, or in headphones. I think those private records always leave a mark. You remember those a little differently.

I know the song “Memory”, and specifically the Elaine Paige version, but this was the only one that wasn't rooted in nostalgia for me. It was proposed almost as a challenge from someone I work with, Michael Pizzuto. He was curious what I do with a track like that. And I honestly wasn't sure at first. I was stumped for a couple days, and it forced me to approach arranging in a very different way because some of my standard toolkit just wasn't working. But I think it's my favorite of the bunch! I love things that push me into places I don't picture myself. It's the best way to learn.