Cover Lover: Amanda Palmer, Outshine, and Pterodactyl Problems

I’ve always liked Dresden Dolls, so when Amanda Palmer went solo, I naturally followed her adventures. Every time I see her live, she always puts on a great show. I’ll never forget seeing author Neil Gaiman at one of my shows, and was shocked to see how chummy they were (I didn’t it until later, but they were dating at that time).



Palmer was down-under (in Australia), and covered Midnight Oil’s hit song “Beds Are Burning”, featuring Missy Higgins on lead vocals. The song was part of Palmer’s Forty-Five Degrees: A Bushfire Charity Flash Record, a charity album in response to the bushfire crisis plaguing Australia at that time.



If you like Midnight Oil, you’ll be pleased to hear that she also covered “Truganini”, featuring Montaigne. You can hear both of these songs on YouTube, go here for “Beds Are Burning”.



Track listing

Sweden’s Outshine released their cover of “Nightcall” last month. We first heard the Kavinsky (featuring Lovefoxxx) song as the soundtrack to Nicolas Refn’s Drive in 2011. It’s a stand-out song that follows that Beauty & the Beast formula (a growly dark male vocals in contrast to a sugar sweet female vocal), and it works really well in that song.



It’s obvious that Outshine heard this song, liked it, but didn’t really want to include the nice girl-vocals, instead, making their version deliberately dark and dreadful.



A few years ago, we caught London Grammar in Feb 2015 was surprised to hear that covered “Nightcall” on their live set.



Prior to this, The Bluetones frontsman Mark Morriss covered “Nightcall” on his album A Flash of Darkness in 2013.



About the same time, Natalie McCool released “Nightcall” medley with “Real Hero” on her 2013 self-titled album.



There’s something about that song, I just can’t explain…

Toronto rockers Pterodactyl Problems released their cover of Adele’s “Hello” on Spotify on Valentine’s Day (Feb 14, 2020). You can listen to the song via show.co/pS57a7I or buy it on Amazon.



The band is described as genre-bending, genre-defiling… and apparently now gender-bending version of “Hello”. Overall, if you like the original song, you’ll like Pterodactyl Problems’ version – which played faithfully to the original song.

Adele at the Theatre De La Jeune Lune (02 Jun 2008)

It’s hard to believe how big and far-reaching Adele’s music have gotten. There was a time that no one’s heard of Adele. I had front-row seating to see the singer when she came through town in June 2008. Tickets were $17. My memory is bad as usual, but I don’t remember seeing a packed venue – but was told the show was sold out at 600 capacity. Still… that’s a tiny number for someone like Adele.
This was Adele’s first time in the U.S.A…