Trampled by Turtles covers Yes on AV Club Undercover. (PHOTO: screen shot)
Northern Minnesota’s own Trampled by Turtles is now a repeat visitor to the AV Club’s Undercover series, in which mid-level bands struggling with their limitations in the harsh face of stardom cover one song from a list of tunes by other mid-level bands struggling with their limitations in the harsh face of stardom and/or radio classics from the ’80s. The whole thing is an enterprise to appease a certain kind of 30- to 45-year old web viewer, which it mostly does.
This week, Trampled by Turtles covered “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes. You can see it here:
As the AV Club writers point out, this was a tough task for Trampled by Turtles. Maybe too tough. The instrumentation of the song was lovely, but getting Dave Simonett and the backup vocals to sound right outside their natural range perhaps extended the Turtles’ necks out of their shells just a bit too far.
A better example of a Trampled by Turtles cover might be the band’s 2012 AV Club Undercover remix of Arcade Fire’s “Rebellion (Lies).” At the time this one came out, I actually ripped this thing onto my MP3 player where it remains a favorite.
It was beautiful and original, maybe not their thing, but i had it on repeat when it came out. They could consider re recording it, they did a beautiful job.