Friday, September 4, 2015

“A Real Hero” by WINTERHOURS - Judging a Song a Song by Its Cover

     WINTERHOURS is a five-member band in London. They recently released a five-track EP entitled “Wild Shadows.” The EP is embedded below. The song “Show No Sorrow” is our favorite of the five tracks.
     The release of the EP triggered a memory refresh of how WINTERHOURS caused us to reconsider separate biases against covers and certain waveforms. Briefly stated, we’re not fans of covers. The bias is always in the direction of originality. But a few years ago, WINTERHOURS covered “A Real Hero,” a song originally performed by College and Electric Youth. The original was featured in the movie “Drive.” We didn’t pay much attention, until we heard the cover by WINTERHOURS. Only then did we listen to the words and recognize the reference to pilot Sully Sullenberger landing a plane on the Hudson River (“155 people on board; All safe and all rescued”). We decided that, unlike the metaphor about books, it’s acceptable to judge a song by its cover.
     The waveform bias is that song waveforms with a long series of regularly spaced spikes tend to be Electronica or House songs that are likely outside of our area of appreciation. But the cover by WINTERHOUSE has a waveform with that characteristic and we enjoy the song.  

     WINTERHOURS is formed of Alex J Dunne (vocals, guitar), Andy Stewart (guitar, keys, vocals), Krys Bascombe (bass, vocals), Tom Shepherd (drums, vocals) and Beth Winter (violin, keys, vocals). 


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