Friendly Fires - Your Love (Frankie Knuckles Cover)

I dig me a good cover. And by "good", I mean when a band takes an original song by another artist and plays it in their own style (as opposed to a note-for-note copy of the original). A good cover is a great way to hear a different interpretation of a song you love, and a great way for the covering band to pay tribute to an artist that influenced their own music. And quite often, these revealed influences can come as a surprise from a band you never imagined would dig the kind of music that they're covering...

Friendly Fires - Your Love (Frankie Knuckles Cover)

...like Friendly Fires covering Frankie Knuckles, for instance. In case you're unfamiliar with the original track (which I include below for your added enjoyment), a little backstory may be in order:


Meet Frankie Knuckles, house music pioneer and regular cool cat. While resident DJ at The Warehouse, a nightclub in Chicago, in the late 70s and early 80s, Knuckles began to create his own electronic tracks, sampling the R&B and disco singles popular at the time and splicing them together with uptempo, four-to-the-floor beats and analog synthesizers to create a revolutionary dancefloor sound that quickly made The Warehouse a Chicago hotspot. "Your Love" was one of the first tracks to become widely recognized as 'house' - which, if you hadn't guessed, was shortened from the name of the club where it originated.

Frankie Knuckles - Your Love

Friendly Fires, an indie dance-punk band from England (think Klaxons, Foals, etc.), take the original track, up the tempo a bit, translate it to their own instrumental setup and launch into a really sick version of a classic track which is just as much their own as it is Frankie Knuckles'. Sure, it sounds a bit raw and slightly underproduced, but being off their very first Photobooth EP, I'd say it's a pretty fair effort. Tell me you wouldn't dance to it. I dare you.

Oh yes.

If you dig, I highly recommend their self-titled debut album. Like that, and then some.