Fourplay - Fourthcoming (Album)
» FourPlay- Fusion of a lifetime - August 31, 2006
The audience applauds as a low, distorted drone sparks up. Then the bass line comes marching in… dum dum dum – dee dee dee – dum dum dum – dee dee dee… before the band launches into the opening riffs. The audience cheers again in recognition of a classic. But instead of an angry man screaming Killing In The Name Of an electrified violin scratches out the vocal melody and instead of electric guitars lighting the fuse of an angry generation the riffs are created by classical instruments (violins, violas and a cello) with guitar pick-ups strapped to them.
This is Sydney’s pun-loving Fourplay String Quartet. Much of the band’s renown has come from their previous covers of songs like The Strokes’ Reptilia and The Beastie Boys’ Sabotage. And they continue this tradition on their fourth album – the appropriately titled Fourthcoming (their first live recording) – which includes covers from a diverse range of artists – The Cocteau Twins, Sufjan Stevens, Leonard Cohen, Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday and, of course, Rage Against The Machine. For the most part the covers stick to the same formula – the violin following the vocal melody over an arrangement that sticks fairly faithfully to the original song.
However, that’s not always the case here. Their version of Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat includes heartfelt, raspy vocals provided by violist Tim Hollo and Billie Holiday’s Lover Man features Lara Goodridge’s smooth vocals. Another highlight is their treatment of the dense orchestration in Sufjan Stevens’ The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades… - it’s beautifully arranged and seems like quite a feet for a four piece.
It may be the novelty of a string quartet covering rock songs that initially grabs attention for Fourplay, but their albums have always included the bands’ own compositions. Album opener Everything Was Going Fine... sounds like it could easily be one of the band’s covers - of a long-lost classic rocker that you’ve never heard of. The rest of the originals on Fourthcoming, mix up the styles – from lounge jazz (Butter Girl), to dreamy, exotic soundscaping (Venice Underwater one of the album’s high points), to bluegrass country (A Grain of Truth featuring an amazing piece of viola-as-banjo soloing from Shenzo Gregorio) and summery dub ‘n bass (Rudd-a-dub Dub). Each piece is beautifully performed by the members and is most definitely good enough to stand up well against (if not outshine) the novelty value of the set’s covers.
The album, on the whole, is just fantastic. My only complaint is that some of the covers on Fourthcoming don’t go far enough. On songs like Rage’s Killing In The Name and Jimi Hendrix’s Spanish Castle Magic the instruments are so tricked out that they could almost pass for the guitars of the original and the arrangements are very faithful to the original. I can’t help but wonder whether these versions would have been more than just a novelty if plain old acoustic violins and violas had been used to put the songs in a different light.
