Covering The National.

Lackthereof is the long-running side project of Menomena's Danny Seim, formed in 1997, who made their 9th release (third with any kind of proper distribution) July 22nd 2008. 'Your Anchor' contains a highly experimental selection of songs, almost a caricature of Seim's main project, with new influences, simpler instrumentation and a definite folk influence. I think the band's attempt to describe themselves in three genres on their myspace (emotronic/folk/healing & easylistening) is about as close as they realistically could have got. While some songs retain the kind of funk/punk Menomena feature, other parts (namely 'every kind word') explore folktronica with the kind of psychedelic vocals more often seen from Devendra Banhart. The vocal itself isn't too far from the National's Matt Berninger, but varies so much across the album, particularly on their cover of 'Fake Empire', that any kind of generalisation is made impossible.

I've always loved how Danny Seim's projects really do explore boundaries of indie rock i could never even imagine existed. 'Fake Empire' is the icing on the cake. The catchy piano line present in the National version has been stripped and replaced with a simpler one and an electro-ambient drone has been placed underneath two tired psychedelic voices. This is an extremely odd but strangely satisying take on a classic song by The National.

Grab the original here.

The Lackthereof cover is available for streaming here.

And also, here's another strange cover of this song, by Scottish folk rock band Frightened Rabbit, who give in to a partial cover during their song 'My Backwards Walk' live in Denver.