Let’s not bury the lede; Sam Russell sings his cover of Zachary Warnes’s “Everything is Changing” in falsetto. Like full, guileless, going-for-it falsetto accompanied by nothing else than tastefully played electric guitar dialed up with a healthy dose of reverb. Sam’s cover is confessional, desperate, and laced with a kind of timeless R&B pleading that plants the song firmly into Sam’s well-curated Eddie and the Cruisers-esque universe. This is a meal made out of 2 simple but hard-to-nail-down ingredients. Enjoy:
Which brings us to the original from Zachary Warnes, which starts out with a more early 21st century indie band-based arrangement, like the shimmering power pop of Big Star or the Raspberries pulled through the slightly more brooding vibes of Mazarin or, more notably, the Shins. The vocals have a pinched, reedy quality for which I’m generally a sucker. The band, particularly the drums and bass, are tight and groovy, occasionally punctuated by clean, funk guitar chords and “oooh” background vocals that tie the whole song together. A Big Muffy acid rock guitar solo leads into one last chorus that repeats a few time before giving way to a Vanilla Fudge-esque outtro (maybe it’s a coda? anyone know?) that dials up the guitar wailing and circa 1971 spacey vocal effects, ending the song in a decidedly different place from where it started. It’s like Warnes showed up on a Vespa and tore out of town in a van with a dragon painted on the side. So Sam dove into this murky, yet enjoyable, bongwater to grab the essential pearls that form his pared-down version. This, my friends, is the magic of a Ball of Wax covers volume.