CSS - Knife: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yellow House was one of the preeminent records of 2006, putting Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear squarely at the forefront of the supercool indie scene…but you know all of that already. Friend is a 10-track collection of re-workings, collaborations with other P4k-approved acts like CSS, Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, and Zach Condon of Beirut.

Both Cox (as ‘Atlas Sound’) and CSS gives “Knife” the bleepity-bleep treatment, the former sticking more to the original’s sweeping flavor and the latter turning it into a pulsating but not overly forceful electro jam. I’m not sure how many changes of clothes Lovefoxxx can get through on this one, but I’d like to see them do it live. Guess good melodies go a long way.
Condon and the Dirty Projectors lend a unique hand to the band’s extended (read, totally fucking epic, complete with a choir) version of “Alligator,” from their first release, Horn of Plenty. It’s Grizzly’s atomospheric ambiance at it’s very peak, so my usual reservations about “re-do’s” are waived on this one.

Perhaps most interesting (and ambitious) is a cover of The Crystals’ “He Hit Me.The only other time I can recall hearing a cover of this was a sad-sack, smeared lipstick kind of take by Hole when I was in about 8th grade. Many profound thanks to BoH for replacing that memory with their drum circle-in-a-monastery version.

I’m posting this track as a stream, which I’m not sure is totally kosher, so please let me know if I’m raining on your parade and I’ll gladly take it down.

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