It isn’t easy to cover a Bob Dylan song without sounding a bit out of place, you know, dressed up in someone else’s clothes, or even worse—like Keanu Reeves doing Shakespeare. Even the simpler songs in Dylan’s canon are lyric-packed, not to mention the varying verse lengths and brilliant, though ultimately distracting, imagery. Long story short, “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” is a very brave choice, and one which Phoenix pulls off gracefully (embedded below), albeit by truncating Dylan’s epic 65-line ode to his first wife, Sara Lownds.
Frontman Thomas Mars steps out of his normal vocal style a bit for this rendition, channeling Dylan’s drawn-out phrasing and pacing himself brilliantly. I could go on and on, but you’re better off listening before I digress into an imminent Dylan factoid-dropping rant.
Stream it below or download the MP3 at Pitchfork (via the Tripwire).