Oct 17, 2008

New "You Only Live Twice" Cover

Yesterday morning, Los Angeles public radio station KCRW played a version of "You Only Live Twice" that I'd never heard before, immediately preceding "Another Way To Die." Turns out it's a new cover by the band The Postmarks, and will be including on their upcoming covers album, By-The-Numbers. It was a good cover, with a softer-spoken female vocalist than Nancy Sinatra or Bjork. The orchestration seemed to owe more to David Arnold's arrangement for Bjork and Natacha Atlas than John Barry's original, and that worked well. If the album's on iTunes, I'll definitely download the song, but I may even buy the CD for it. The band sounded good, and there are some other cool covers on there like Mick Ronson's "Slaughter On 10th Avenue." And, that's a pretty cool cover. The second square seems to represent "You Only Live Twice," and it does so well!

This is the second new recording of a classic Bond song due out this fall, following Duffy's previously announced cover of "Live And Let Die."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mick Ronson's cover?!?! Ergh! You mean a cover of The Venture's "Slaughter On 10th Avenue"...

Tanner said...

Oh, have you heard the Postmarks' version? I haven't heard it yet, and in the context of the track list (with Bowie's "Five Years," which Ronson played guitar on), my mind went immediately to Ronno. Does the Postmarks' version adhere more to the Ventures' version of the song? That's a little disappointing to me, because I love the Ronson version so dearly. But the Ventures are great, too, and it still intrigues me, nonetheless.

I guess I should have just said "Richard Rodgers cover," since both the Ventures and Ronson (and countless others) were covering his modern classical ballet composition... Well, it's clearly a piece open to lots of interpretations, so I'd be curious to hear what these guys do with it!