Friday Night Videos: Got Ya Covered!

If you haven’t heard of Architecture in Helsinki, then you’re not a hipster. No seriously, it’s in the definition*. For you non-hipsters, then, I would describe AiH — who are from Australia, by the way, which is no where near Finland — as goofily endearing, but looking around I see that every serious music critic describes them as “experimental,” and I want nothing if not to be serious, so I’ll describe them as experimentally endearing.

AiH’s most well-known tune, a goof… er experimental song about, ummm… something experimentalish, accompanies this genuinely pleasant silliness, your Friday Night Video:

Do you see why I think “goofy” before I think “experimental?” Up until the very end of the video they’re dancing around dressed as glow-in-the-dark puppets in broad daylight. Where I’m from, that’s called goofiness**.

I enjoy this song, I really do. It’s cute and fun, but that’s all it really is. Something about it leaves me feeling a bit cold; I don’t really feel connected with whatever it is they’re singing about. As a result, it never really “sticks” for me. It might get stuck in my head for half a day, but once it works its way out I won’t think about it at all until I stumble across it again.

Maybe AiH realized that their version could keep some listeners at arms length, because with the “Heart it Races” single they included 3 covers and 2 remixes of the song by other artists. Picking one of the covers at random to start with, here’s Dr. Dog’s version (for some reason this doesn’t seem to work on my phone, so if you’re goin’ mobile, try this):

Holy sh**! Is that the same song? That was fishin’ awesome! I mean, that gives a life to it, even if I still don’t quite understand what the hell it’s about.

I sold it to a man and threw him out that window
He went boom da da da da da da boom dat dat dat da da
Made his wife a widow

Huh? Oh what the hell, I don’t care. I’m listening to it again.

I can’t find videos of the other covers. One, by Hey Willpower turns it into a dance tune, and the other, by Soft Tigers, is schizophrenic — at times it’s minimalist, at times it’s ethereal, and finally it too turns into a dance tune. I kinda like the Pink Skull remix from the single as well. Still, nothing reaches the Dr. Dog level, for me at least.

So what have you been listening to on your Friday night? Any good covers?

Oh, and if you like the sort of straight guitar rock that will remind you of that time in 1972 when you woke up in the middle of a trashed hotel room on a table, your face in what’s left of an eight ball, surrounded by a bunch of passed out wannabe rock ‘n’ roll gods, check out some more Dr. Dog:

*I really hope someone clicks on that to see if it’s there.
**I understand that it can be goofy and experimental, but saying so would be much less fun, and I like fun.