Covers can be tricky. My perfect balance between original and redo finds no set formula but one commonality among the covers I love is listening to the new brings the old along with it, like the presence of a dear departed friend.
This is nowhere more evident than on Lay’s cover of Nick Drake’s “From The Morning”, a song I would have thought impossible to cover, but in Shannon Lay’s capable hands/guitar and voice, her version wraps itself around the original like a long embrace that reaches beyond “From The Morning” into other Pink Moon territory.
I’m a full out fan of the music of Shannon Lay and wrote about her 2021 album Geist back when it came out in 2021. To my ears, there are layers over layers in her seemingly simple music that rewards repeated listens over time. On Covers, Lay also has her way with the music of Sibylle Baier, Vashti Bunyan, Elliott Smith, Ty Segall, Jackson C. Frank, OCS (Thee Oh Sees), Arthur Russell, and The Velvet Underground and these original voices echo in her reworkings, memories transcribed.
