Milton Nascimento/Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy :: Cravo î‰ Canela

Revisiting Will Oldham and Tortoise’s 2006 collaboration, The Brave And The Bold, last week spawned some interesting offline chatter about what it means to cover an artist. While much of the discussion was centered around familiar positions and attitudes, the consensus was (not surprisingly) that most everyone tends to prefer an interesting re-interpretation to a more catholic version of the source material. What Oldham and Co. do with Milton Nascimento’s “Cravo î‰ Canela,” on The Brave And The Bold, resides between the two.

Whereas the tune is not completely deconstructed and re-built from the ground up (like their cover of “Thunder Road“), they do inject it with a dirty and raw muscularity the Brazilian original only hints at. The result yields one of my favorite covers on the album.

MP3: Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy :: Cravo î‰ Canela
MP3: Milton Nascimento :: Cravo î‰ Canela
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6 thoughts on “Milton Nascimento/Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy :: Cravo î‰ Canela

  1. Thanks for posting about the BPB/Tortoise collaboration. I am trying to turn someone on to The Boss and I think their cover of “Thunder Road” is going to help alleviate some of her “he’s just so cheesy” anxiety.
    I caught BPB at an insanely small venue in Columbia, SC last week and it was amazing (as usual). What wasn’t usual was how he opened for himself. Everyone came on stage (or to corner) wearing sunglasses and what looked like flannel onesies, booties and all. They played for about an hour, and I didn’t recognize a single song. They all sounded very new, and not like anything he normally does. Not that he does anything “normally.” They took a break, came back in suits, and played album songs for about an hour and a half. I was wondering if anyone knew anything about this weird side project-type thing that seems to be going on.

  2. The first set includes covers from the Kevin Coyne/dagmar Krause album Babble. He is calling that incarnation of the band The Babblers. I saw the show in New York this week…after several near misses, my first time seeing BPB. It was a unique, transporting experience. The band was amazing and look out for the female singer Angel Olsen.

  3. This is indeed a beautiful song. But the song’s title is “Cravo E Canela” (i.e. “Clove& Cinnamon) and not “Cravo É Canela”, with the accent (it would mean “Clove is Cinnamon). Congrats, your site is awesome.

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