We love a good cover here at Vanyaland, and the only thing we love more than a cover is a cover inspired by a cover. And that’s what we have loosely at play here as Ducks Ltd. take on The Jesus And Mary Chain’s forever unfuckwithable alt-rock classic “Head On,” inspired by the rendition Pixies busted out just two short years after its initial 1989 release. Ducks Ltd., the Toronto/Australia duo who we fell for back in January through a jangle-pop haze called “Sheets of Gray”, team up with illuminati hotties for their new surf on this older turf, and the results are expectedly awesome.
Ducks Ltd.’s “Head On” marks the first in their new series of covers titled The Sincerest Form of Flattery, and each offering will feature a collab with a friend of the band. In this case, we have Sarah Tudzin dropping backing vocals, and some recording recommendations, on this one.
“I really like covers!” exclaims Ducks Ltd.’s Tom McGreevy. “Every time we do one we feel like we learn something about songwriting and arranging that makes us better at making our own music. This project is kind of an extension of that exercise, and as a band who obviously wear our influences on our sleeve a bit, it’s a fun way to share some stuff we’re into.”
It’s pretty hard to screw up “Head On,” but Ducks Ltd. manage to catch sparks off the original and refuel it with a new flair in just half the OG runtime. It sprints to the shiny gates like the Pixies’ surf-rock take back in the day. Yes, you might say it makes you want to feel, and it makes you want to try.
Whether or not you want to blow the stars from the sky is entirely your call, though.
“The original ‘Head On’ is a total classic,” McGreevy adds. “The lyrics are just so brilliant in an understated kind of way, but I actually started thinking about covering it after listening to the Pixies’ cover of it on Trompe le Monde (which is the best Pixies album, don’t @ me). They really kick the shit out of it, in a totally different way than The Jesus And Mary Chain do, and it made me desperate for a chance to sing it, and also got me thinking about ways you could adapt the vibe of it to make it fit into our world a bit.”
We’ll let McGreevy take it from here: “Sarah Tudzin has an immense and powerful production/mixing mind and one of my favorite singing voices of anyone doing stuff right now, so we asked her if she’d be down to work on it with us and she helped us figure out how to make all the pieces fit together. Truly a high honor! She also persuaded us to record our guitars through actual amplifiers for the first time ever, rather than going straight into the box like we normally do which feels momentous! Amplifiers! Who knew!”
Get an electric charge from it below, because sometimes that second-hand living, actually, it’ll do just fine.
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