Shearwater & Sharon Van Etten – “Stop Draggin’ My Heart
Around” (Tom Petty & Stevie Nicks)
Record Store Day 7”, 2013
After listening to Shearwater’s “Rooks” for the last entry,
I got Shearwater on the brain, so I might as well talk about how great their
cover (with the impeccable Sharon Van Etten) of Tom Petty & Stevie Nicks’ “Stop
Draggin’ My Heart Around.” Shearwater abandon all the lovely, ornate elements
of their usual sound for the ballsy swagger of Tom Petty and Van Etten takes a
little sandpaper to her lovely vocal chords to affect a worthy, sultry Stevie Nicks
tribute. Meiburg even tones down his melodramatic (I say that lovingly)
quavering vocals to inject the song with a certain amount of testosterone that
his vocals usually do not bring to the table. What I love about this cover is
that it’s taken from the AV Club’s Undercover series, and I always thought they
should compile those covers into a compilation every season because some are
jawdroppingly perfect and I’ve discovered so many bands (via the performers and
songs covered alike) that, goddamnit, they deserve a better audience than the
AV Club can provide. This season they practically buried the Undercover series and I am particularly bothered by
that. ANYWAY, this cover, fantastic. Off the cuff, raw as hell, and accurate and we can talk
about Sharon Van Etten’s gravitas all damn day (I’ve put off writing about her
latest—Are We There—because my love
for that album grows a little more every time I hear it). The b-side features
another collaboration between Shearwater and Van Etten in a lovely original—“A
Wake for the Minotaur”—whose hushed glory captures the true sensibilities of
both artists.
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