That Music List: LIST 275 - 10/10/2026 (a sixth cover versions special)

Hello again,

"Sunday in Sheffield, people. DID YOU GO TO CHURCH? Don't worry, this is Tchurch!"

And the gospel according to Tchotchke at Sidney & Matilda last Sunday night was very, very good indeed.

The Playin' Dumb single from last year's album of the same name was my belated way into this New York three-piece, so inevitably a pristine rendition of that was always going to number among my highlights of the evening.

However, I also loved how much they also draw from a wider palette than just the '60s bubblegum girl groups that are the usual starting points of reference. I've seen Todd Rundgren's poppier output mentioned before now, and I got that entirely.

Tonight offered hints of other early '70s US power pop such as The Raspberries, too, plus a cover of the Bo Diddley-penned Mickey & Sylvia standard Love Is Strange which sounded for all the world like Mink DeVille until the vocals kicked in.

The last-named wasn't the only cover on the night, given other tasteful and appropriate selections from Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons and The Shangri-Las, the latter a rip-roaring run through Bulldog by way of an encore.

A tremendous set overall, even with singer/drummer Anastasia Sanchez demonstrably full of the lurge to have hit the trio on their travels, yet still nailing song after song. It's frightening to imagine how awesome they'd be at 100% full power.

I wonder whether they had any takers for the guitar on the merch stall for which they were asking £1,200. That's a bit of a change from the usual seven inch single and pin badge fare.

It was nice also to come across the work of support act Doe (not the 2010s trio of the same name) for the first time.

A front line of singer-guitarists who could pass for a young Emma Anderson and Miki Berenyi from Lush, but a sound which couldn't quite - some 90s shoegaze inflections, yes, but the psychedelic blues description I'd seen online was more accurate.

Early days, I'm assuming, and if so a promising start, all the more so on the night with a stand-in bassist deployed.

***

Talk of Tchotchke isn't entirely irrelevant to this week's List theme, given their aforementioned propensity for a well-chosen cover version. Here are another thirty-three covers - some of them personal favourites of the recording artists doing the covering, some less so, some better executed than others, but all interesting to me one way or another.

From Phil Ochs to Cerrone, from The Raspberries to Lightnin' Hopkins, from Young Marble Giants to Lady Gaga, there's a bit of everything in here.

(I can be persuaded either way, incidentally, as to whether DJ Kaos counts as a cover version, a remix, or just pilfering. Let's go with the first-named today).

You'll find a few examples of cover subject and cover object adjacent to each other, all quite deliberately so. Specifically: Stevie Wonder covering The Beatles next to a Stevie Wonder cover by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (the latter not all that regular visitors to this parish otherwise); a Magnetic Fields cover by analogue synthpop supergroup Doublespeak next to Stephin Merritt (in his Future Bible Heroes incarnation) having a crack at Vicky Leandros's 1967 Eurovision entry (and wasn't her rendition of that one of the less painful guest spots at the 2026 Contest, by the way?); and Carter USM's run through Rent by the Pet Shop Boys next to Blade's hip-hop reinterpretation of Lenny and Terrence by Carter USM.

It's worth spending a moment or two considering the original of Lenny and Terrence, released in October 1993 as the second single from the previous month's Post Historic Monsters and possible to regard as the precise moment that some of the music weeklies and monthlies started to go after Carter (get Carter, even).

At least one singles reviewer lazered in on the fact that, given a bountiful array of contemporaenous stars whose music Jim Bob and Fruitbat could have slagged off in song, they namechecked two black performers and nobody else.

No objective reading of the lyrics sheet can conclude that this was a racist act, but it was an extraordinarily clumsy one, inviting bad faith agents to think or presume the worst of them. Were social media around in 1993, its more pernicious elements would have enjoyed a feeding frenzy.

A rant at two artists who between them racked up two top five albums (one a number one) and seven top 30 singles that calendar year wasn't the flex the south London duo might have thought it was anyway. Moreover, for all of Lenny Kravitz's affectations of Hendrix and whoever else on Are You Gonna Go My Way, Symphony or Damn by the artist still known at the time as Terence Trent D'Arby was conversely a strong, varied and more authentic-feeling collection blessed with at least one genuinely excellent single.

Maybe not surprisingly, therefore, Blade's more extended tirade lands its blows more successfully in the verse on Lenny than on Terence. See what you think.

If the inkies went after Carter USM in the mid-1990s, they weren't any less sparing of Fischerspooner in and around the time of their #1 debut album at the start of this century, the music press's ire drawn by anything from the band's apparent style over substance to the eye-watering sum paid by Ministry of Sound for their signature.

I suspect there was also something unspoken and a bit nastier at play, Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner's flamboyant music and personae largely at odds with the determinedly earnest (and mostly heterosexual male) guitar band image and music which certain papers strove to promote instead to the near-exclusion of much else. (See also the odium directed towards the similarly stylish Romo scene and acts five years prior, at the height of Britpop, by all bar perhaps a couple of Melody Maker scribes).

Fischerspooner only actually split up seven years ago after what might be considered a broadly unfulfilled career (certainly from the perspective of racking up any smash hits), but for my money I'd still take the deceptively measured, serene cover of Wire's The 15th from that debut album over a hundred of the Starsailors they were shunned for any day of the week.

A cover of a 2001 song rather than a 2001 cover of something older, Alien Chicks' glorious tear through Missy Elliott's Get Ur Freak On from the new EP released only eight days ago makes them - I think - the first act to appear in consecutive Lists since we came back at the start of the year. Right place, right time.

The year 2000, meanwhile, bore witness to the arrival in the charts of Sugababes, at once the coolest, smartest British girlpop band of them all; and including Pink Opaque's recent - and appropriately reverential yet characteristically sparkly - cover of Overload is the very least I can do after failing to get to Pete and Danielle's first ever headline performance (back at Sidney and Matilda) this Wednesday just gone. Trust you knocked it out of the park, both.

Finally, there's an indiepop cover of Bizarre Love Triangle... because you're never far away from an indiepop cover of Bizarre Love Triangle. The New Order staple is one of those songs, along with Emma's House by The Field Mice, which seems to get covered disproportionately often by indiepop acts, almost by way of a rite of passage.

The Frente! interpretation bundled on to volume #20 of Indie Top 20 gets the nod this time, but I could just have easily included Even As We Speak's. Or Echosmith's. Or Ishan's. Or Glaiza De Castro's. Or Whirl's (the last-named at least adding a bit of late-'80s lo-fi fuzz to proceedings).

Kids - it's a classic song and all that, but you don't need to knock any more of these out. We won't think any less of you. We promise.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 05/10/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT
DIE ÄRZTE - Gehn wie ein Ägypter (1987)