Earlier this year I discovered the fantastic knob-twiddling/sampling/crooning charms of Aussie-Belgian Wally De Backer. Going under the artist name ‘Gotye‘ the 26 year old has released a couple of spanking albums. His second full-length, Like Drawing Blood, was released in Australia in 2006 and slowly, by word of mouth has worked its way round the world, earning itself a spot on eMusic’s ‘Must Haves’ list (where I discover a ridiculous amount of good music by the way) and then on to a full physical release in the UK through Lucky Number in August.
One of the album highlights, ‘Hearts A Mess’, has been a regular for me since first hearing it:
Eltham High School (of unknown geographical location) clearly have a hepcat music teacher in Ed Fairlie as he arranged the above song into an excellent school band number. Just shows the strength of the original as it still shines in this totally different context. Must be a real buzz for the artist as well, seeing people invest so much energy and care into re-interpreting the song. Truly the sincerest form of flattery:
EHS is in Eltham, Melbourne, Australia.
Posted by desterye on January 25th, 2010.