See the results of last week’s battle here:
Dig if you will a podcast – The Be Good Tanyas and The Twilight Singers engaged in a battle. Two differing versions of Prince’s “When Doves Cry”. First up is The Be Good Tanyas‘ verison, from their 2006 album, Hello Love (Amazon link). Next up, we have The Twilight Singers‘ version from last year’s SPIN tribute: Purplish Rain (link).
Which one makes you tremble inside?
Listen to the podcast featuring both songs:
[audio: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/backbeat.cachefly.net/coverville/audio/Coverville-WDIB-011-WhenDovesCry.mp3]
Or Download
I went with Other because I like both the Ani DiFranco version and the version from Romeo + Juliet that features a boys choir and morphs into a pop version.
Don't like being a hater, but I had to go 'neither.' I like the Be Good Tanyas I enjoyed the actual music of their version, but the singer sounded like her tongue was swollen for much of the song. On the other hand, the Twilight Singers took all the funkiness out of the song. Totally ruined it.
I went with 'other' as well. Between the two, I preferred the Twilight, but it didn't touch the awesome acapella arrangement by Schrödinger's Cat.
Prince is obviously peerless and BNL can just turn their hand to everything, but Damien Rice brought something to When Doves Cry that really took the song on for me. Purple Rain was a seminal album of my youth and I didn't think anyone could touch it, until Coverville 210, that is. Damien Rice owns it … and Brian didn't even mention him!
Going to have to disagree with these other comments, I really liked both versions. Voted for the Twilight Singers, but the Be Good Tanyas were excellent as well.