The Dø “Tightrope (Janelle Monae Cover)”
One wouldn’t think there would be a point to hearing a version of “Tightrope” stripped of Janelle Monae‘s glorious pipes, Big Boi’s rap and that joyride of a funk-fest groove the late, great James Brown would of shook a good foot to had he been around to hear it, but Finnish/ French indie rockers The Dø prove otherwise with this fantastic cover.
Clocking in at an epic nine minutes-plus length, The Dø do the damn thing and more on this flip of the 2010 jam, spending the first three minutes by slowing the original’s tempo down to a tough blues-rock crawl heightened by teasing spurts of Dan Levy’s electric guitar work and a subdued vocal performance by Olivia Merilahti that’s all sexy-purr deliciousness.
Apparently, however, the badassery displayed in these opening minutes is just a warm-up, as the next two-thirds of this see the duo completely lose their shit in all kinds of awesome ways, giving us a killer fuzzy guitar solo and ferocious blasts of jazzy hard rock cacophony as Merilahti gradually transforms into a demon-possessed rawk tigress.
Janelle approves, and now so do we.
The Dø’s latest album Both Ways Open Jaws is available now.
