Bowie Cover Night Turns Neumos into Suffragette City

To make what a long story short(ish), and to place it squarely in the same misty-eyed past tense where David Bowie’s physical form now resides: Bowie Cover Night last Thursday enabled seven great local acts to each use David Bowie’s music as their own creative mirror. And what each of them reflected back made everyone in that capacity crowd feel alien-beautiful.

If Bowie’s rock-star flash was what moved you, The Gods Themselves nailed that element right at the start of the bill. With their razor-sharp white threads and the inbuilt sensuality of Astra Elane’s and Dustin Patterson’s dual vocals, The Gods rocketed “Space Oddity” from melancholy displacement to glam-rock star-hopping. “Queen Bitch” fit the band’s glittering exterior like a white elbow-length glove. “Golden Years” grooved sweetly, with drummer Collin O’Meara warming the song’s plastic soul and Patterson’s croon suggesting but never aping The Thin White Duke’s serpentine cool. The band cagily ended on a high note with a jaw-dropping cover of “Ashes to Ashes” that—and I never thought I’d say this in my life—culminated in a transcendent, atmospheric…keytar solo.

Star Anna followed, tapping deeply (and likely without even realizing it) into the thread of unease Bowie often wove into so many of his songs. She and her solid backing band opened up with “Panic in Detroit.” Her haunted demeanor was amplified by guitarist Jeff Fielder’s Mick Ronson-worthy riffs and the song’s apocalyptic lyrics. The singer poured a sense of urgency into “The Prettiest Star” that gave unexpected depth to one of Bowie’s most charmingly-glittery cabaret numbers, and her rendition of one of Bowie’s latter-day tracks (2002’s “Afraid”) felt ready to implode in on its tangled emotions. Star Anna closed out her set with a powerful and cathartic rendition of “Life on Mars,” one of the few of my wish-list requests/guesses to be realized onstage.

Not that my crummy batting average mattered when every cover-version curve ball proved rewarding. Black Whales epitomized that by smearing glam-rock lipstick over their wonderfully trippy sound on “Oh! You Pretty Things” and “Diamond Dogs.” They hauled out their finest psych-rock trimmings for their set-closing version of “Moonage Daydream,” but the Whales’ cover of “Where are We Now?” was the keeper amongst a very strong bunch. Its starry-eyed swooniness made it sound like the extra-magical slow dance song from the best John Hughes movie never made.

Speaking of magical, The Spider Ferns’ four sinewy cover songs more than earned that hoary cliche of an adjective. The duo opened with a narcotic trip-hop variation on “Let’s Dance” before winding through equally beguiling versions of “Lazarus,” “John, I’m Only Dancing,” and “Wild is the Wind.” Kelly Fleek’s siren-song of a voice suggested Siouxsie Sioux fronting Portishead, a connection that Alton Fleek’s lushly-textural guitars definitively brought home. It’s heresy to suggest that any of the night’s covers bested the originals, but the Ferns’ mesmerizing work came pretty damned close.

Then again, so did Prom Queen’s. Celene Ramadan and her terrific musical cronies only got three songs compared to the four-song sets of most everyone else, but what they did play was indisputably choice. The subtle menace that’s frequently coursed just beneath Ramadan’s skewed ’60s pop welled to the surface, imbuing the epic “Five Years” with arched-eyebrow malevolence. Their cover of Bowie’s cover of the Pixies’ “Cactus” played dirty pool with a rockabilly-noir snarl, and “China Girl” added kittenish sensuality to the song’s romantic desperation. Guitarist Jason Goessl utterly decimated the proceedings with some brutal Chet Atkins-meets-Jack-White fireworks.

If you’re one of those people who thinks electronic dance music is just a sterile excuse for someone to shake their ass, Vox Mod’s roof-rattling showing would’ve, well, knocked you on yours. Without getting industrial, Vox brought sweat and rock muscle to his instrumental work (his background as a drummer definitely informs his sonic attack). Vox’s co-vocalist Kyle Porter made for a riveting counterpoint, singing with a resonant baritone and pogoing insanely while still gracefully rocking a gray suit and skinny tie. The duo took two of Bowie’s most maligned ’90s dance tracks, “Real Cool World” and “Dead Man Walking,” and slammed them home with a club-ready blast, totally redefining the tunes while still honoring their composer.

The Maldives’ closing performance started out solid, if a little muted, with a cover of “Starman.” But in the shambolic spirit of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, they gained momentum as they went.
Jason Dodson’s rootsy tenor felt unique from, yet totally in sync with, “The Man Who Sold the World.” Ironically, the night’s only overlap happened with “Lazarus,” one of the last songs Bowie recorded. In contrast to the Spider Ferns’ alluring dance-goth take, The Maldives rocked the track with numbered-days defiance. Drummer Faustine Hudson took down the song’s last two minutes with stormy ferocity.

“Heroes” turned out to be The Maldives’ (and the entire evening’s) closer of choice, and if the cover felt more earnest than incandescent at first, it too gained momentum—and emotional impact–as it went. By the time the capacity crowd was singing “We can be heroes” along with Dodson, he’d given in to the music as thoroughly as the audience. If there is a Heaven—or a Suffragette City—out there, David Bowie was surely looking down, slouched serpentine in a chair and nodding his approval from beneath a black bolero hat.