with neon ghosts in the city
(or: july 3’s honey from the hive)
posted at 5:53 am by brandon in sweet you rock and sweet you roll
INXS (featuring Pat Monahan) — “Beautiful Girl”
(from Original Sin
Because the lyrics he sings tend to be disastrously dopey as often as they are brilliantly probing, Monahan — the fearless leader of those Grammy-winning pop behemoths Train — doesn’t always get the credit he so richly and eternally deserves as a truly gifted performer. (I’d wager the fact that Pat is now more famous and celebrated for singing fluffy nonsense like “Hey, Soul Sister” than for his crazy-great classics “Drops of Jupiter” and “Meet Virginia” — to say nothing of little-known masterworks of his like “Pirate on the Run” and “Always Midnight” — is not going to help that particular cause at all.) But he is flat-out fabulous here, stepping into Michael Hutchence’s ginormous shoes — a titanic task you’d scarcely wish on anybody! — and creating something entirely fresh, and wholly enjoyable: adapting his voice just so, all the better to effectively mimic that clipped hush that marked most of Hutchence’s most memorable work, and yet knowing just when to unleash the acrobatic power which marks all of his own, Monahan kills this classic, resuscitates it, and then slaughters it all the hell over again. A ravishing case study in crafting a landmark cover.
