Juliana Hatfield / Emma Swift "Lotta Love / Give Me Strength" (2022 Record Store Day Black Friday split single)
For Record Store Day Black Friday 2022. a limited edition 7-inch vinyl single was issued featuring Juliana Hatfield and Emma Swift covering two Neil Young songs. The single was limited to 1,500 copies, and one dollar from the sale of each record was donated to Casting for Recovery, a fly-fishing retreat program for women with breast cancer.
For the A-side, American indie-rock veteran Hatfield covered Young's 1978 song "Lotta Love", which is best remembered for becoming a Top 10 hit for the late Nicolette Larson during that same year. Hatfield's version is based more on Young's original -- which is not a bad idea, although I would have liked to hear Hatfield render the song in the same style as her Olivia Newton-John covers album from 2018. However, Hatfield's rendition does not have the gentle folk sound of the original version which Young recorded with Crazy Horse. Instead, it's loaded with the type of electric guitar distortion that is more typical of Young's work with Crazy Horse. It's very experimental in nature, and only partly successful; the second half of the song is too cluttered with disjointed noise (even for a Neil Young and Crazy Horse cover), making me yearn to hear the sax and flute from Larson's version. Maybe it was meant to sound loose and ragged and irreverent, in a Neil Young-y kind of way, but that doesn't necessarily make it good. Instead, it made me think about how much better it could have been.
For the B-side, Australia-born alt-country artist Emma Swift covered a more obscure Young song called "Give Me Strength", recorded by Young for a planned 1975 album titled Homegrown, which wasn't released until 2020. This is a more somber ballad about lost love; as a part of this single, Swift's version might be interpreted as being about the passing of a loved one who fell victim to breast cancer. Whatever the intent, Swift's rendition effectively uses ambient sounds to convey the song's feelings of sadness and despair. This is the better side of the single.
This was not the first time Swift took part in a split-single with a pair of Neil Young covers. In 2018, Swift recorded one side of a similar indie single, whose other side was recorded by female indie folk artist Marchelle Bradanini (aka Pony Boy). For this single, available on Bandcamp, Swift put a modern indie-rock spin on Young's 2 a.m. song "Mellow My Mind" (from 1975's Tonight's The Night), conveying the song's anxiety in her own voice. Bradanini, for her similarly dreamlike rendition of the epic "Like A Hurricane" on the flipside, uses distortion and reverb more sparingly than Young did for the original, expressing a slightly more restrained sense of anxiety than Swift's track. To my ears, this single is preferable to the one by Hatfield and Swift.
Juliana Hatfield / Emma Swift "Lotta Love / Give Me Strength" (American Laundromat single ALR-0055) 2022
Track Listing:
a. Juliana Hatfield - "Lotta Love"
b. Emma Swift - "Give Me Strength"
Emma Swift & Pony Boy "Neil Young Split Single" (Cosmic Thug) 2018
a. Emma Swift - "Mellow My Mind"
b. Pony Boy - "Like A Hurricane"
For the A-side, American indie-rock veteran Hatfield covered Young's 1978 song "Lotta Love", which is best remembered for becoming a Top 10 hit for the late Nicolette Larson during that same year. Hatfield's version is based more on Young's original -- which is not a bad idea, although I would have liked to hear Hatfield render the song in the same style as her Olivia Newton-John covers album from 2018. However, Hatfield's rendition does not have the gentle folk sound of the original version which Young recorded with Crazy Horse. Instead, it's loaded with the type of electric guitar distortion that is more typical of Young's work with Crazy Horse. It's very experimental in nature, and only partly successful; the second half of the song is too cluttered with disjointed noise (even for a Neil Young and Crazy Horse cover), making me yearn to hear the sax and flute from Larson's version. Maybe it was meant to sound loose and ragged and irreverent, in a Neil Young-y kind of way, but that doesn't necessarily make it good. Instead, it made me think about how much better it could have been.
For the B-side, Australia-born alt-country artist Emma Swift covered a more obscure Young song called "Give Me Strength", recorded by Young for a planned 1975 album titled Homegrown, which wasn't released until 2020. This is a more somber ballad about lost love; as a part of this single, Swift's version might be interpreted as being about the passing of a loved one who fell victim to breast cancer. Whatever the intent, Swift's rendition effectively uses ambient sounds to convey the song's feelings of sadness and despair. This is the better side of the single.
This was not the first time Swift took part in a split-single with a pair of Neil Young covers. In 2018, Swift recorded one side of a similar indie single, whose other side was recorded by female indie folk artist Marchelle Bradanini (aka Pony Boy). For this single, available on Bandcamp, Swift put a modern indie-rock spin on Young's 2 a.m. song "Mellow My Mind" (from 1975's Tonight's The Night), conveying the song's anxiety in her own voice. Bradanini, for her similarly dreamlike rendition of the epic "Like A Hurricane" on the flipside, uses distortion and reverb more sparingly than Young did for the original, expressing a slightly more restrained sense of anxiety than Swift's track. To my ears, this single is preferable to the one by Hatfield and Swift.
Juliana Hatfield / Emma Swift "Lotta Love / Give Me Strength" (American Laundromat single ALR-0055) 2022
Track Listing:
a. Juliana Hatfield - "Lotta Love"
b. Emma Swift - "Give Me Strength"
Emma Swift & Pony Boy "Neil Young Split Single" (Cosmic Thug) 2018
a. Emma Swift - "Mellow My Mind"
b. Pony Boy - "Like A Hurricane"
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