Album Review

Collide – These Eyes Before

• 11th Nov 2009

Collide spent the past year putting together this 10 track covers album for your enjoyment, and as usual they are proving to be masters of quality in the results. Those already familiar will know of several cover songs they have done on previous albums in the past, but they have never gone all the way to produce a full on covers album until now.

The choices are a mix of classics (Pink Floyd, Beatles, Bowie), modern popular (Depeche Mode, Radiohead) and then also a few less predictable tracks (David Essex, Chris Isaak).

The album opens with two quite breathtaking renditions of Pink Floyd’s “Breathe” and then The Moody Blues “Knights in White Satin” (from where the album takes its title). These two songs were perhaps placed at the frontier to welcome in fans of the band and of the songs without making anyone feel ill at ease with what they were doing as the shoe does indeed fit on both tracks.

Finding time to recover from these two accomplishments is not permitted as the album continues through more rock and pop friendly tracks. Of course the merits of their success on each song can be viewed in many ways. Some songs they manage to completely rejuvenate, others sound more familiar to the originals but with another band putting their sound over the top. The Beatles “Come Together” is a song worth any bands time, but the original equally hard to remove yourself from.

Much more of a surprise is their cover of Radiohead’s Creep. And I will be honest that I wasn’t expecting much from it. I’m not the worlds biggest Radiohead fan (nor enemy), and although I like the song Creep it was forced into my youthful ears back when it was released on far too regular a basis by DJ’s in every pub, club, bar and student union. Collide have done the magical job of altering the song enough for it to still to sounds like Creep; but significantly different from how you are used to hearing it. And this is why the duo work so well together. Statik works his magician’s wand over the sounds and kaRIN lets the words become her own representation of sound.

Much more relaxed and subdued is the David Essex cover of “Rock On,” whilst Depeche Mode could well enter and win a competition for the most covered modern band. Collide take a stab at “I Feel You” which is a very distinct sounding song (like with “Come Together”) that Collide here decide to make very subtle changes in the music while largely following closely to the format of the song. Again it is the two artists putting their own tweaks here and there throughout the song that make it work.

A more relaxed fit to the bands vibe is “Space Oddity” which is perhaps one of the more ‘removed from the original’ tracks and could be quickly mistaken for their own song if you were to remove the opening oft quoted lines. The vocal work by kaRIN on this track is just perfect with layered backing making the sound much more surreal.

Next up is the much more playful “Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing” which perhaps can be seen as an influence on some of their earlier work. kaRIN get’s to get her more moody and punk self out from time to time in this song. Whilst she is still the ethereal mistress of dark subtlety, its nice to see her always checking out new territory and then mastering the mood.

It is an intriguing project to listen to as you get an incite into how they approach the songs and also get a good look into what music outside of creating their own makes them tick. The downside to this of course is that their taste in music may not cross over with your own, so as the choices are varied there may well tracks that strikes more of a high notes than others; depending upon how open you are to interpretation.

And this is what is so vibrant about this band is their approach to their produce. There are always new ideas shimmering away and every other year we are presented with something new artistically from them. For my own money I think their versions of “Breathe” and “Knights in White Satin” easily equal the originals. Being a fan of both this band and those songs it is a pleasure to see that they unified perfectly. But everyone has their favourites, and this is some of theirs.