Individually, Katy Goodman (La Sera) and Greta Morgan (Springtime Carnivore) are known for sterling, melancholic pop. On their new collaborative album, Take It, Itβs Yours, they combine their voices around spectral arrangements of punk and new wave classics by the Wipers, the Misfits, Bad Brains, the Replacements, Blondie, the Buzzcocks, the Jam, the Stooges, Gun Club, and Billy Idol. Itβs an intimate document of their close friendship and dedication to creative deconstruction, taking apart and piecing back together classic songs in spooky and thrilling new ways.
The strident blast of βWhere Eagles Dareβ and the apocalyptically erotic βSex Beatβ are brought full circle, evoking the girl group and β50s rock & roll that initially inspired songwriters Glenn Danzig and Jeffrey Lee Pierce whereas others are transformed wholesale: Iggy Popβs proto-punk anthem βI Wanna Be Your Dogβ takes on a haunting, gothic romance; Billy Idolβs βRebel Yellβ becomes a mournful folk ballad; hardcore pioneers Bad Brainsβ βPay To Cumβ becomes a spectral western ballad. βWeβll take the chance,β the couple harmonizes over shuffling drums.
βOn the surface a song like βPay to Cumβ is really masculine, but the lyrics are really more about freedom,β Goodman says. βYou have the right to sing, you have the right to dance. When you have two girls harmonizing on these songs, they take on a new meaning, because youβre listening in a different way.β
Working at Comp-NY Recording, the duo handled the recording themselves, Morgan on assorted guitars, keys, drums, and marimba, Goodman on bass, both singers harmonizing together throughout. Recontextualizing and disassembling the songs, they found inventive ways to twist them to their will, from the sparklingly post-punk guitar solo in βBastards of Youngβ to their shimmering girl group take on Blondieβs βDreaming.β
The resulting album sounds like the soundtrack to some lost grindhouse noir film β βWhat would Quentin Tarantino Wantβ was a repeated mantra during the recording process β or a static-laden AM station picked up on the dial during a late night desert drive.
Often, scrubbing back the fuzz and grime of the originals revealed βhidden messages that might be obscured by the tempos or the distortion,β Morgan says, her point particularly poignant concerning on the groupβs version of the Buzzcockβs βEver Fallen In Love,β their take destined for brokenhearted teenager mixtapes.
βItβs almost a test of the durability of the songs,β Morgan says. βIf we can re-imagine them as much as we did, it just shows how solid the skeletons of those songs are.β
Take It, Itβs Yours draws its name from the end of the original version of βBastards of Young,β an ad-libbed aside from Paul Westerberg the duo felt summed up the project in a way.
βWe sort of imagined that the artists handed us these songs in a way,β Morgan says.
βThey gave us these songs, and now we can give them back,β Goodman says.