Hear Iggy Pop, Jarvis Cocker’s Menacing Nick Cave Cover
Iggy Pop and Jarvis Cocker released a rumbling cover of Nick Cave‘s “Red Right Hand” on Wednesday. The song is the theme for the fourth season of the BBC series Peaky Blinders, which debuted November 15th.
Cave’s original, released in 1994, is spare and threatening. The minimal instrumentation keeps the focus on Cave’s ominous growl; occasionally a funereal bell rattles loudly in the mix. Pop and Cocker’s version, in contrast, is full of bludgeoning guitars. It sounds like it might have appeared on an early Stooges album. The two rockers sing nearly everything in tandem, sounding grim and inescapable. The track comes to a close with a wordless howl.
It’s been a busy year for Pop, who also collaborated with the electronic wizard Oneohtrix Point Never on “The Pure and the Damned” and joined Jamie Saft’s jazz trio for three songs that appeared on the album Loneliness Road. He turned 70 this year, but told Rolling Stone he has no interest in slowing down. “I still have that ‘let’s try this and see what happens’ thing,” Pop said. “I’ve never lost that since way, way early.”