Here’s the challenge: you want to cover an electro-R&B song with confessionally soulful vocals and gentle synth touches. Where to begin? How will you interpret it in a way that retains the elegance of the original but has your own inimitable mark?
The original song in question is Nic Masangkay’s “Forever,” with the earthy-and-yet-not-of-this-earth voice of Falon Sierra. It’s timeless in a way that infuses ’80s sonic ethos with ’00s sensibilities; it’s the kind of song whose aural imprint is one with its message and structure. It’s also the kind of song that Levi Fuller and the Library love enough to want to honor with their own rendition.
Let’s talk arrangement and sound: This is a band that has worked together long enough to move through a structure intuitively. When I listen to their material, I imagine a nod or a wink or a tilt of the head from one of them becomes a clear indicator to the others to pull back, slow down, or charge ahead on the next section. Bass lines on “Forever” alternate between root notes and fretboard gymnastics, the latter echoing the synth lines of the original and adding a sinister bent. The guitars move from terrific plucked/muted harmonics to clanging swipes and suddenly into growling wall-of-sound menace. The drums are a wonderful complement to the original’s programmed percussion and compliment to the direction of the stringed instruments—particularly nice is the hi-hat work, sneaking in triplets that foreshadow vocal rhythms that pop up later (one of the coolest and perfectly-executed marks of Falon Sierra’s work).
Levi could have sung the whole thing himself and that alone would have been “sufficient,” for lack of a better phrase—a lot of covers use the gender-flip vocal as their sole contrast attribute, and Levi’s voice here is unadorned by FX or double-tracking, just as Sierra’s in parts of the original—but it wouldn’t have quite been the stunning cover that it is. Cue secret weapon: Amanda Winterhalter, one of my favorite New Country/Americana artists. Levi and Amanda duet the lyrics in a way that takes the song’s message from internal to external dialogue. Levi follows his own vocal style to manipulate his portions of the lyrical melody with slight drawls and subtle downward movements, while Amanda does the same with her own style while wisely choosing to closely mirror the original in places and proving that no certain genre of music owns any melody.
All in all, “Forever” is a gorgeous cover and really raises the question: When will we see a next-level collaboration between Levi Fuller and the Library and Nic Masangkay with vocals from Falon Sierra and Amanda Winterhalter?