COLOR FILTER – Satellite Of Love
TURBONEGRO – Suffragette City
The cover version: two approaches. Color Filter take the shy-shuffly-beats route so familiar to all indiepop listeners – think Stars’ “This Charming Man” if you want. But while you can all too easily imagine it filling up space on side two of a glitter-coated C110, it has a charm Lou’s strung-out original lacks. Plus it’s a good move for the band: Color Filter have ideas and heart but so far not the songwriting skills to knit them into very much – a kooky cover halfway through their album thickens it a bit. Turbonegro’s attitude is the simpler and better one, mind. Their “Suffragette City” misses Bowie’s stagey whine, but it adds more drums, more kick, more sex, more guitar, more rock, and wisely it doesn’t tamper at all with that titanium glam hook. They understand the sole point of the cover: to take a song, and to do it better.