Warpaint
The title is the oldest sentence in the language for putting somebody in the ground ... David Bowie borrowed it in 1980 for a song about a man he had invented eleven years earlier and sent into space, and then, in this one, called back down to earth in poor shape ... Ashes to Ashes was a funeral for a character ... So a cover of it is a strange thing to attempt ... a burial of a burial ...
Warpaint were four women in Los Angeles who had just found their drummer when a small label asked for a Bowie song for a charity record, money to War Child, the summer of 2010 ... They chose the coldest one he ever wrote and warmed it up ... A reviewer who loved it put the change plainly ... tender piano where the wiry synth had been, two voices in cushioned harmony where Bowie sang cold and alone, and Jenny Lee Lindberg's bass out in front, leading the song like the leader in a dance ... The whole thing slows down and rocks, back and forth, the way you'd rock a baby ... or child ...
The original is a machine describing a man ... This one is a room of people describing the same man, more kindly, at a tempo a body can keep ... Four years later they brought it back for their festival summers — Boston, Barcelona, Glastonbury — because a song that started as a favor had become theirs ...
The first line of the burial service says what we are made of and where we go ... The song was always a question about whether anyone comes back from that ... Bowie's answer was no ... Warpaint's, sung in two voices, sounds like maybe ...