Blue Monday?

Yesterday was far from being a Blue Monday, unless we're talking about the azure-coloured sky. I went to a wonderful place (the Weaver Hills and their environs), walked, saw countless larks and watched an enormous hare coolly leap a high wall topped with barbed wire.

But buying Hannah Peel's music-box covers of various songs including Blue Monday reminds me of a little hobby of mine: collecting Joy Division and New Order cover versions. So here are a few of my favourite Blue Mondays and a couple of others.

Here's the original:



Here's Hannah Peel's. The EP version is actually better: layered and lovely. But this is pretty good too.



I'll never tire of the Brythoniaid Cor Meibion's version, promoting last year's Festival Number 6. It's just magisterial.



As you probably deduced, I tend towards the melancholic: under the Detroit-influenced beats, much of New Order's work is downbeat and lost - the dichotomy is what makes them work. That said, here's Nouvelle Vague's Blue Monday, which I find insultingly clodhopping. This isn't a band in love with the material. Far too ironic.



Orgy, on the other hand, are heavy but perhaps too respectful:



Kylie Minogue's mashed up Can't Get Blue Monday Out Of My Head is a slice of cheeky genius though:



Also-rans: The Enemy should be ashamed. Chancers. Thankfully not online. I'm not sure how I feel yet about the Jolly Boys' calypso version either. And although I like elements, especially the viola, the Vitamin String Quartet's cover feels a bit like attention-seeking slumming. The Gregorian Chant version is execrable. Way too mannered (and this is from somebody who rejected everything about Catholicism except for the music) and frankly beneath them. The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Country Teasers versions are jolly thrashes, but not distinctive enough to detain us. You've got to do something different for a decent cover. Otherwise, what's the point?

Which is why I have a soft spot for these other New Order covers. First up, Boo Radleys' early shoegaze/thrash attempt at True Faith:



Then there's Frente's achingly beautiful 'Bizarre Love Triangle': the original buries the lyrics deep in the mix. Nouvelle Vague do a passable version too.



Then there's Rheinallt H Rowlands' gorgeous 'Gwawr Newydd yn Cilio', his  cover of Joy Division's 'New Dawn Fades'. I'm a huge fan of RHR. He covered several JD tracks: get them (legally) here, but don't believe a word of the biography.

Gwawr newydd yn cilio

Finally, some more stately misery. Firstly, June Tabor and Oysterband's rendition. I adore Tabor, but I'm not entirely convinced by this one. After that, Susanna and the Magical Orchestra's sparse, echoing version: good with the lights off.

Dydd Llun Glas

I don't normally do advertising, but I was impressed by the Festival No 6 line-up and location - in Portmeirion, the bonkers architectural fantasy used as the set of The Prisoner. I particularly love their stunningly powerful Welsh male voice choir's cover of New Order's 'Blue Monday', by Cor y Brythoniaid



Welsh male voice choirs are great, but the material is often awful. Not this time. And if you like Welsh translations of Joy Division/New Order, try Rheinallt H Rowland's cover of 'New Dawn Fades', 'Gwawr Newydd yn Cilio', which is ravishing:

Gwawr newydd yn cilio

This leaves a nasty taste in my ears…

I like June Tabor's folk albums. I like Oysterband. I like Joy Division. I like covers of Joy Division/New Order tracks. I actually go out of my way to collect them.

But I don't like this Tabor/Oysterband version of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' one little bit. I'd be embarrassed if someone walked in on me listening to it. It's just removing all the dynamics and getting the words in the right order with very little empathy.



To make up for it, here's June Tabor's heartbreakingly beautiful cover of Richard Thompson's 'Waltzing's For Dreamers' and a couple of really good versions of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' by Susannah and the Magical Orchestra, and a rather more tongue-in-cheek but no less beautiful rendition by Nouvelle Vague. Sadly, the very best Joy Division cover every, Rheinallt H Rowlands' 'Gwawr Newydd yn Cilio' (New Dawn Fades) isn't on the net.







In the absence of Rheinallt, you can have Frente's tender cover of New Order's 'Bizarre Love Triangle' instead. The original is beautifully lush electronica, and there's also an early Boo Radleys version that turns it into a full-on shoegaze noise machine - on vinyl only, sadly.