To make a good cover is to do one thing: transform the original into something almost unrecognisable thereby ‘making the song yours.’ The majority of covers don’t really do that and therefore they can sound nice, but they’re not interesting. Cigarettes After Sex’s cover of Brooks and Dunn’s Neon Moon, thankfully, passes this test.
After teasing lyrics on Twitter for a couple of weeks, Greg Gonzalez and his band dropped their first piece of new music since single Crush/Sesame Syrup last June. I was actually bowled over to find out Neon Moon used to be a 1992 country song by Brooks and Dunn before CAS made it into a soft, sad and sultry sound.
It’s textbook CAS. I listened to it on my way home from work with my earphones in (there is no debate –this is best way to listen to Greg’s croon) and instantly felt a really familiar melancholy that I can never shake when I listen to them. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to. It’s the same kind of sound you can get from Beach House and Slowdive –ambient pop, shoegaze, slowcore –whatever the label, you just want it to continue until you’re in a peaceful slumber.
A far cry from the bouncy, Southern drawl of the original, CAS’s cover evokes that classic combination of loneliness and longing that poor wee Greg seems to constantly be riddled with. It’s beautiful in the same way that all CAS songs feel like waves rolling over you ever so gently. When he sings “I think of two young lovers/Running wild and free/Close my eyes/Sometimes see/You in the shadows” you can’t help but imagine you’re closing your eyes with Greg. And in your head that person who got away is swaying in your brain like algae in the water. And it hurts but it feels really good. That’s what every CAS track does to me anyway. What an overshare-er. Gross.
Unfortunately it’s not as good as their other cover, a brilliant and absolutely de-va-sta-ting cover of Speedwagon’s ‘Keep On Loving You’, and you do sort of get the impression that although Greg and the band can do slow and sexy TOO well, it might be time to expand their repertoire.
That said, it’s incredible that they’ve managed to release two EPs and an album of songs that, when you stop and think, all sound exactly the same as the other but they’re all just a little different that they feel like different places and landscapes.
Basically, I’m not bored of Cigarettes After Sex yet and I don’t want to be.
AEROSPACE ORANGE 