Photo by Lauren Dukoff

Devendra Banhart's handful of covers have always stood out to me more than any of his trippy originals. One-offs like "Fistful of Love" and "Don't Look Back in Anger" highlight his vocal nuances without letting him float around in the stratosphere. He needs these songs' rigid structures, and in turn he can loosen them from their original context and completely reshape them.

Such is the case with "Forget About Him", from Chapter Music's upcoming Loving Takes This Course: A Tribute to the Songs of Kath Bloom (don't miss Bill Callahan's contribution to the same record). The upbeat tempo and plucky accompaniment of the original belie its romantic hopelessness, and Bloom makes lines like "Guess I'll have to die to forget about him" sound devastating but not overdramatic. Banhart's cover sounds a bit tongue-in-cheek at first, thanks primarily to the spacey effects and his hammy croon. But his misdirection is a sign of humility: Knowing he can't improve on the original, he doesn't even try to communicate resignation and instead makes loopiness a symptom of a broken heart. His cover is a heartfelt valentine to its writer, right down to his final words: "Thanks, Kath!" Indeed. (via Naturalismo)

MP3/Stream:> Devendra Banhart: "Forget About Him"
[from Loving Takes This Course - A Tribute to the Songs of Kath Bloom; due 03/14/09 on Chapter Music]