Cleopatra 2024
Getting under the skin of perennial favorites, garage-minded family infuse evergreen melodies with fresh grooves.
Hold On, We’re Comin’
It takes a lot of audacity – in all semantic aspects of this word – to provide fresh backing tracks for quite a few well-loved songs and not undermining the classics’ emotional meaning and lyrical message, yet what multi-instrumentalists Flávia and Martin Couri have never been lacking in is cheekiness. And boldness too, what with the couple’s move from Brazil to Denmark while retaining their zeal in creating both infectious originals and imaginative covers. Yes, one would assume that fashioning a perky go at “Bikini Girls With Machine Guns” for THE CRAMPS tribute and collaborating with THE GRASS ROOTS on a fuzzy homage to the latter’s “Wait A Million Years” are hardly in the same league, or as intimidating, as laying a new twang under the voices of such deceased giants as Johnny Thunders or Dave Prater. However, the powerful duo manage the feat with much respect and taste – if not without defiance which oozes from THE COURETTES’ performances.
Of course, it’s great and gratifying to listen to the Couris fly on their own, giving Taylor Swift‘s “Shake It Off” – a fitting finale for this album’s vinyl version and a penultimate cut on the record’s CD variant where Jay & THE AMERICANS’ “Come A Little Bit Closer” gets a crunchy overhaul – a distinct, delicious garage flavor but not damaging the piece’s dance-oriented rhythm, as Martin and Flávia shift all the sonic layers back in time, towards the ’60s. Still, the finely filigreed upgrade of Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin'” beats the two last numbers by opening the platter like a nuclear blast, and the little fam’s effusive readings of THE FOUNDATIONS’ “Baby Now That I’ve Found You” and THE ASSOCIATION “Never My Love” push all the right buttons, albeit in a different ways, whereas the pair’s playing for THE FLAMIN’ GROOVIES’ “Shake Some Action” seems too faithful for their own good. And though “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory” serves their aural assault well, the lad-and-lady’s handling of Maurice Williams and THE ZODIACS’ “Stay” sounds as fab as their hurricane-string rumble on “Peppermint Twist” from Joey Dee & THE STARLITERS’ repertoire.
And yet the question of why there’s a need to disturb the canon remains unanswered: as the husband and wife demonstrate their ability to appropriate any perennial, they should be allowed to do it by leaving evergreen tapes untouched.
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