Almost five years to the date since they last descended upon the Like a Version studios, Boy & Bear have reminded fans of their musical brilliance by way of their cover of Simple Minds’ iconic 1985 track “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”.
Kicking off their two-track appearance with a rendition of their 2019 track “Hold Your Nerve”, the Sydney outfit stole the show by recruiting Annie Hamilton into the fold for their soulful, groove-laden cover of Scottish band Simple Minds’ enduring hit.
“I was actually in a bar pre-COVID and I heard the song and was like, “That’d be a really fun song to cover’,” said vocalist Dave Hosking. “And I knew I’d forget it, so I went into the bathroom and I actually recorded myself singing it in the bar bathroom.”
“There’s such energy at the top of the song,” he continued. “As soon as we and shift into like, ‘rock’, it falls over so fast, and we were like, ‘This isn’t going to work in our version of it. It’s just going to sound sad as opposed to exciting’.”
“It’s really hard in a song that has that many significant hooks, that many key changes,” added Killian Gavin. “It’s like all these things are coming at your ears the whole time.
“So you have to really [be] like, ‘If we change one [aspect], it sort fits awkwardly in the middle. We almost need to take out a whole bunch of them and re-approach it from a far more neutral sort of palate.'”
The result is a faithful recreation of the original, albeit with the slick Boy & Bear sound that has seen them become so beloved over the last decade.
Boy & Bear’s latest release was At Golden Retriever Studio, an acoustic album of re-recorded songs which arrived in September of 2020.
