Has this ever happened to you: you’ve owned an album for quite some time, and listened to it – perhaps a bit passively – several times, and then all of a sudden it makes an impression on you? The song was “This Charming Man,” a cover of an old Smiths song, as rendered by Death Cab for Cutie. It was one of those odd moments – I instantly thought I liked the cover better than the original. An irrational thought, really, since I’d not actively compared the two, and I didn’t for a while, until just now when the “party shuffle” brought the issue back to my attention. Ben Gibbard doesn’t even attempt to mimic Morrissey’s florid vocals, and the two renditions have entirely different textures. I saw Morrissey in concert at the rather tragic Aragon just before Thanksgiving; rumor had it that he was on a layover between a show in Mexico and his home in Rome, and wanted to make a quick buck to pay for first class on the way home – he had no other US shows for that tour, apparently. It’s an adorable – and doubtless apocryphal – anecdote. So I’m really in over my head with this post, as I have no experience trying to write about music. Ironically, the Death Cab version sounds more punk. On direct comparison, I think I like the original a bit more, and for an entirely silly reason: the guitar is just so cute!
Wow, this post took pretty long to go nowhere.
