When it comes to covering David Bowie songs, his latter works hardly, if ever, get a look-in compared to all those old favourites from the 70s and 80s that you’d find on any compilation CD or streaming playlist. Instead, Todd Kerns, the man known for Age of Electric, Static in Stereo, Original Sin LV, Toque, and one of Slash’s Conspirators (seriously, Dammit does a lot and that’s not even all of it!) has taken the complete opposite tact and looked at the very end of Bowie’s extensive career with the album which served as his epitaph.
As Bowie looked death in the eye and said, “I can use this”, one of the greatest and influential musical minds of the 20th century had the chance to say farewell. The great thing about covers is no two are the same. Do you go for making a version faithful to the original? If it’s a complex composition, do you strip it back? If it’s bare bones in its arrangement, do you add a whole load of embellishments and transform it into something more grandiose in the vein of Queen or Ghost? Here, Kerns has went with the second option.
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Pulling out all of the drums and jazz sections, Kerns allows guitar work to drive it. Whilst Bowie’s original had his initial vocals sounding frail, he and the character accepting death before his more recognisable bright roar makes an appearance, Kerns keeps it steady with his own distinctive boom but pulling from his arsenal when needed to show he can wail with the best of them. Pinned against the dark, rumbling electric riff at the beginning before it interweaves with the acoustic, there’s a contemplative mood to it, as if to ask “Is this what others before me experienced?”
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Whilst there’s also a sense of defiance to this version, it never dominates proceedings but still asks to be heard. It takes balls to cover Bowie at the best of times and to do him justice into the bargain. However, it takes even more to tackle a heady number like this as Bowie confronts his own mortality. Very few musicians could make this work and Todd Kerns is certainly one of them.
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