“Creep” is such an iconic song, was such an arrival, a calling card, a mission statement, an indication of a very particular direction of travel for Radiohead, that you have to question the wisdom, perhaps even the sanity, of any band covering it. Surely you can’t win. Either you stay faithful to the original and invite the question, “why bother if you are just replicating what has gone before”, or you do something radically different with it and be accused of assuming that you can improve on perfection by those who hold it close to their hearts.
Well, Waves Crashing has managed to find a third way of doing things. They have, to a fair degree, stayed close to the original template, but then coated it in dreamy textures and orchestral sweeps, shoegaze anthemics, and post-punk energies. If this were a car, tyou might say that they have built a new frame around an existing engine. You know the power and performance are intact, yet you get to marvel over a whole new set of sleek sonic lines and musical bodywork.
It is one of the few covers that I have heard that takes the song to its logical next step. And remember, recorded songs are just a sonic document of what happened at a time and place. Change the circumstances, and even those most iconic songs might have ended up radically different.
If Radiohead recorded this breakthrough track after coming off tour with My Bloody Valentine and happened to be heading into the studio just as the London Philharmonic were winding down a recording session, this might very well have been the result. So perhaps less a cover of the original and more an experiment in what if…
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