Various Artists / We Were So Turned On: A Tribute To David Bowie

Various Artists
We Were So Turned On: A Tribute To David Bowie
(Manimal Vinyl Records)

With Bowie remaining sadly under the radar for the foreseeable future, it’s always a welcome surprise to find a covers album to explore, even if it merely serves to remind us of the incredible source material.
The Daily Mail, always an encouraging source of optimism, has jumped upon a cover of ‘Absolute Beginners’ by the French prime minister’s wife Carla Bruni, calling it the “worst Bowie cover of all time”. In a not entirely rare example of The Mail talking bollocks however, she makes for one of the better tracks, largely because she doesn’t seek to ‘re-imagine’ it – with just voice and piano, she does just fine.
Duran Duran manage to navigate ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ by again staying close to the original, while Genuflex take braver steps with less success on ‘Soul Love’ – turning it into a slow motion synth meditation.
Warpaint play it faithful with ‘Ashes To Ashes’, adding their own mellow charm if not a great deal of emotional bravado, while A Place To Bury Strangers drag ‘Suffragette City’ into a tinny speed-rock hellhole. It sounds like an 80s space invader arcade game, and suitably achieves a high score for kill-factor: the original’s barely recognisable underneath! It’s fun nonetheless.