On their last album, Humbug, british band Arctic Monkeys enlisted a cover of “Red Right Hand”, a song originally written and recorded by Nick Cave for his album Let Love In.
Nick Cave: you can still be cool smoking cigarettes.
I discovered Cave’s song many years ago because it was selected to be part of The X-Files album that was made of songs featured on the TV series or thematically aligned with it. The track was not chosen to be featured on one of the most important episodes of the series by chance: the song has a disturbed atmosphere, not only built by the dark melody of a theremin, a bell and an organ which reminds soundtracks of old horror movies but also by Nick Cave’s voice, tossed by the Australian musician in a very painful, gothic tone, as if he was reading aloud a classic ghost-story like “The Raven”, by Edgar Allan Poe.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Red Right Hand” (from Let Love In)
Arctic Monkeys: the adolescent features are vanishing for good.
Though it also makes use of an organ with gothic features, Arctic Monkeys version is completely different from Cave’s: the band gives it a fast and anxious pace, fueling it with a furious drum beat and lots of guitar riffs. The subtle nasal pitch of Alex Turner‘s voice also helps to differentiate it from the original version of the song providing more energy and vibrancy to its melody.
Arctic Monkeys – “Red Right Hand” (from Humbug)
