Scott Andrew - lo-fi acoustic pop superhero!

I took advantage of the long weekend to dust off the guitar and get back into the groove of recording some of those neglected song ideas festering in in the area of my brain right behind the orbital javascriptus.

I have two original songs nearing completion, but I won’t be releasing them just yet. So instead, here’s a cover of a song by an obscurish UK group called The Blue Nile. I discovered their first album while I was in college, and was drawn to the strange, minimalist, guitar-free arrangements and vocalist Paul Buchanan’s loungey voice. For a long time I’ve thought about covering one of their tunes as an acoustic song.

Anyway, this was done in a series of one-takes, because it’s more important to me to get it down on tape (er, disk?) than obsess over things being perfect. It was originally supposed to be one guitar and one vocal, but then I added another guitar to thicken it up a bit, then another, then a backing vocal, then I got the idea for the “da-da-da” thing during the chorus, so I added that. You can see how these things spin out of control.

It was fun. I should do more covers, just for practice. I need the practice; my voice is severely out of shape. It’s harder for me to sustain notes and stay on pitch without wheezing. This tune doesn’t feature my best singing. Ah well, it’ll come back.

Warning: this tune is long, over five minutes, and I had to crank it down to 56K to keep the file under 2MB. It’s called “Saturday Night.” Enjoy.