Cults and Nation of Language have shared their contributions to Covers of Covers, a new compilation celebrating the 20th anniversary of the music magazine Under the Radar. Cults have offered their take on Phoenix’s ‘Bourgeois’ from 2013’s Bankrupt!, while Nation of Language have tackled Broken Social Scene’s ‘Stars and Sons’. Take a listen below.
“Under The Radar might have been our first time our music was ever printed about in a magazine,” Cults said in a statement. “When we saw the list of bands that had been on the covers over the years, our initial thought was ‘Wow’. Our second thought was, ‘Let’s do that Phoenix song’. We’ve had ‘Bourgeois’ on our tour playlist for two album cycles now, and it always stands out amongst all the other tunes. We love its lyrics as a critique of social structures that the French do better than anyone. We tried a few different ways of approaching the cover before we gave up and just dove in, playing the song as we would if it was a Cults song.”
Talking about their cover of ‘Stars and Songs’, Nation of Language’s Ian Richard Devaney commented: “Once we settled on Broken Social Scene, and this song, we realized that loving ’Stars and Sons’ so much, if we didn’t transform it a fundamental way, we would end up just copying it straight up. Not wanting to do that, we decided to change the rhythm to turn it into a shuffle, which made it easier to get loose with the structure and have fun with it. We worked with Nick Millhiser of Holy Ghost!, who worked on parts of A Way Forward. On the album, we have a song called ‘Former Self’ that’s also a shuffle, but in a much more reserved way, so we wanted to go all-out here, and turn it into a weirdo dance song.”
Covers of Covers is due out this Friday, March 4, via American Laundromat. In addition to Cults and Nation of Language, the compilation features Cassandra Jenkins, EMA, Grandaddy, Peter Bjorn and John, Water From Your Eyes, Hatchie, Strand of Oaks, Alex Lahey, and others.
Cults released their most recent LP, Host, in 2020. Nation of Language’s sophomore album, A Way Forward, arrived last year.