Someone wiser than I once said that any good song can be played on a battered old acoustic guitar. (Actually, not wiser, but certainly much more famous; it was Noel Gallagher.) But the point is valid and can be broadened to suggest that any song worth its sonic salt can survive reinvention and reimagination and be offered new and unexpected rebirth. And that is what’s happening here with the latest single from Partners in Crime.
If the song sounds familiar, it is because it was initially by pop-folk sixties sensation The Seekers but if their rendition is one of clean-limbed guitar lines, understated beats, and gorgeous vocal textures, Partners in Crime turns it into a sort of proto-punk/garage rock take on the original.
If the Seekers were sophisticated and polished, this time out we find it rougher around the edges and more pumped up, but that is not to say that it is just a punky, lowest common denominator run-through. Far from it. It is still a song that runs on a cool riff, and the vocals still have that same paisley-pop poise, and there is no shortage of pace and melody, keeping the energy levels on the up. It’s just that now it comes from the wrong side of the tracks down in garage land.
They say if you cover a song, you should either remain faithful to the original and pay it tribute, or reinvent it. Here, Partners in Crime do both simultaneously.
