Cover Me: Cougar

An ongoing series in which musicians reveal the artists they’d most like to hear covering their songs. If you’re not familiar with Cougar, meet them right here.

Cougar drummer David Henzie-Skogen:

It’d be cool to see [unorthodox] groups cover the music. … We’d be flattered if a group like Tortoise covered a Cougar song, but it would also make sense.

It’d maybe be cooler … if someone like Akron/Family covered a Cougar song and added vocals. Or someone like Gabryel, the electronic guy. Or to see a pop group take your song and make it a pop song. Take one of the melody lines and turn it into vocals. That would be interesting, if [for example] the Shins covered a Cougar song.

I find, at least among my friends, [that] a lot of people [who] don’t listen to instrumental music very much, they’ll say they don’t like instrumental music but kind of like Cougar, because it feels like we fill the gaps where the vocals would go. Or that the songs seem like singable songs, but when you try to sing them, they’re actually kind of hard to sing. I think that’s actually how our guitar players write, because they write very melodically, but in a way that isn’t … hummable. It’s hard to put your finger on. …

The cover tune is a pretty tricky thing to do. It kinda goes along with my real belief that the reason a band sounds like a band has to do with the band more than the players or even more than just the song.

What would probably be more interesting to me than hearing people playing Cougar would be if Cougar did a covers album. An Elvis Costello song and a Led Zeppelin song and a DJ Shadow song. Maybe I’m just being selfish, but I just want to make the music.

For more on Cougar, check out their installment in the Bad Penny’s “Day Job” series.

Go here to see French Miami’s installment of “Cover Me.”

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