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dot_fennelSilkworm - "Cotton Girl (Marco Collins session)" (mp3)
Silkworm - "Couldn't You Wait?" (mp3)
Silkworm - "Couldn't You Wait? (Marco Collins session)" (mp3)
I just got an EP of angsty pop-punk band Fall Out Boy performing songs acoustically, some of which are great (though if the Emo Board's mandate has expanded to include Joy Division covers, these guys' awful "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is going to get them a knock on the door at some point), and it reminded me of these Silkworm songs, electric versions from Libertine and acoustic versions from The Marco Collins Sessions EP. Silkworm are a direly underappreciated band (marred somewhat by the fact that the fans they do have can't seem to talk about anything except how underappreciated the band is-- oops), and every year or two I find myself listening to nothing but these songs for a day, savoring the interplay of the guitars.
"Cotton Girl" has one of the best opening riffs from Silkworm's early period (when extra guitarist Joel Phelps was still in the band), but the mix squashes the vocals so much in the original version that you're still just listening to the guitar play during the verses, when I think it's meant to be counterpoint. In the Collins session, they seem to have figured the song out; despite the narrator's desperation, it sounds better if he can hold his own against the stampede.
"Couldn't You Wait?" suggests why the album might be mixed as it is; vocalist/bassist Tim Midgett can't really sing-- make that "really can't sing"-- and while I enjoy a voice falling apart in the same way as I enjoy lo-fi home recordings sometimes, I don't think this made any impression on me at all until I heard the re-recording. That doubled guitar line ringing out, stopping and starting, grabbed me enough that I listened to the whole thing more carefully. Midgett manages to make his string of one-liners sound like they mean something emotionally; the song is a kiss-off to an ex, but we never really find out what should have been waited for, and oddly Midgett's verbal digs make it seem like, at some point, there was something there.
About two weeks ago, an unemployed Chicago model named Jeanette Sliwinski tried to kill herself by ramming her Mustang into a car stopped at a red light; she lived, with minor injuries, while all three occupants of the other car were killed, including Silkworm drummer Michael Dahlquist. I was reluctant to mention it, because the tragedy of the whole thing has nothing to do with the fact that Dahlquist was a good drummer, but it seemed even worse not to.
