The Bad Penny (beta)

When’s the last time you heard an indie-rock band – or any rock band … or, hell, any band at all – pine for the day when D’Angelo would cover one of its songs? Leave it to Los Angeles’ unpredictable and imaginative troupe Cassorla to make such a wish.

Ben Cassorla – the guitarist/vocalist for the soul- and jazz-inflected trio – recently dropped the Bad Penny a line to participate in our ongoing “Cover Me” series. Along with dreaming of D’Angelo, he envisioned Talk Talk, Beirut, Dirty Projectors and more taking their respective stabs at songs featured on Cassorla’s Songs of Hair, Trees, Portraits, Shouts and Alphabets EP, which dropped August 18.

(He also let the Bad Penny do the honors of exclusively premiering one of the songs, “My Tree,” in the blog-o-verse. Grab the song below and go here for the full story behind the track.)

If you’d just as rather hear Cassorla play their own songs, throw down for the Songs EP on Bandcamp – or pick up the band’s MP3s on iTunes, Amazon and the like. To hear Cassorla in all their live splendor, get your toosh over to Echo Curio at 9 p.m. on Thursday. The gang – which recently graced an Aquarium Drunkard-sponsored gig – will be playing with Slang Chickens for a mere five bucks.

Lastly but not leastly, keep your eyes peeled for Cassorla’s second full-length, Stay Stay Go, which plops November 9 on Engine Studios.

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Here’s Cassorla’s contribution to “Cover Me,” an ongoing series in which musicians reveal the artists they’d most like to hear covering their songs.

“Shout It”

Robert Plant on vocals, bring in the Staples Singers on the chorus for the background parts, and maybe Margaret Leng Tan (John Cage’s toy piano player) to cover all the instruments.

“The Alphabet Song”

Get Ali Farka Touré on the guitar parts and his son [Vieux Farka Touré] on vocals, Beirut for all the percussion and noise, and the Vienna Philharmonic for string swells and to cover the keyboard parts.

“I’ll Keep Your Long Hair Clean”

Gotta put Levon Helm on drums, have my old friend and amazing singer Krystle Warren, and then bring in Low-era Bowie to produce the whole thing. That could be my favorite one yet!

“Portrait of You”

This one’s hard ’cause it’s so personal. I could see Mark Hollis from Talk Talk singing this. Matter of fact I’d just like to hear that whole band cover this song. I’m thinking Spirit of Eden-era Talk Talk.

“My Tree”

D’Angelo for the chorus definitely. Acoustic-minded Dirty Projectors for everything else … all the girls for the backgrounds … yes.

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Audio asset:

• Cassorla’s “My Tree” (Bad Penny exclusive song premiere)

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Related:

• Paper Tongues’ installment of “Cover Me”
• Research Society’s installment of “Cover Me”
• Mark Bacino’s installment of “Cover Me”
• Cassorla’s installment of “Cover Me”
• French Miami’s installment of “Cover Me”
• Cougar’s installment of “Cover Me”

This entry was posted on 09/18/2010 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Cover Me, Features, Interviews with tags Beirut, Cassorla, D'Angelo, David Bowie, Dirty Projectors, John Cage, Krystle Warren, Levon Helm, Robert Plant, Slang Chickens, Staples Singer, Talk Talk, Vienna Philharmonic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.