Saturday, March 28, 2009

Camille O'Sullivan sings Nick Cave

I came upon this sultry, Irish-French (French-Irish?) chanteuse indirectly, while watching a video by another singer on the same label. What caught my ear were her covers of two stunningly beautiful Nick Cave songs. (My second post on this site was about Nick Cave, and I reviewed his September 2008 Portland concert over at Culture Shock).

Very much like Tom Waits, Nick Cave is a masterful lyricist and a charismatic performer with a voice and sound that is distinct in its rawness and lack of polish. When either of these artist's songs are interpreted--particularly by female singers--I invariably hear them afresh and gain an even deeper appreciation of the poetry.

I'll start with Ms. O'Sullivan's interpretation of "God is in the House."



I love her interpretation, but searched out Cave's own version and found this video, which I like even more:



Here's O'Sullivan singing Cave's beautiful classic, "The Ship Song."



Here's Nick Cave's own solo version:

2 comments:

Mead said...

Sublime. All four renditions, but Ms O'Sullivan's "God Is in the House" is really heartbreaking. Thanks for bringing us these.

MightyToyCannon said...

Thanks for the comment, Mead. I was delighted to discover Ms. O'Sullivan's rendition and found myself re-listening to it several times over the weekend.