Review
Genre and Mood
Trentemøller takes Blue Hotel, Chris Isaak’s lonely 1987 ballad, and makes it a cover in the dark register of darkwave and shoegaze: Nowness called it a shoegaze interpretation of a twangy gothic classic. The mood stays dark and full of longing, with the sultry edge Cover Me heard as seduction.
Song Summary
The Danish producer made Blue Hotel as an exclusive cover for Late Night Tales: Trentemøller, his 2011 instalment of the compilation series in which each guest artist mixes music they love and adds one new cover of their own. He gave the song to two voices, Marie Fisker and Steen Jørgensen, and explained his idea in one sentence: he tried to take it to a different place by taking the tempo down and making it more noisy and dusty. It runs about four and a half minutes; the original lasts three minutes ten.
Musical Breakdown
No source walks through the cover section by section, so this follows what the reviews describe.
The Tempo
The first change is speed: Cover Me notes that Trentemøller slows the track down.
The Texture
The second change is the surface. Where Isaak’s original sets his Orbison-esque baritone against James Calvin Wilsey’s woozy tremolo guitar, in Magnet’s words, the cover is less open and surf-y than industrial and urban: noise and dust where there was clean twang.
The Vocals
Isaak sang alone; here a woman and a man share the song, a duet Cover Me found fit for any David Lynch film.
Concepts in Focus
A cover version is a new recording of a song first released by someone else. Trentemøller keeps the song and its mood, the same dark and wistful results Magnet heard, and changes the tempo, the texture and the singers.
distortion is the roughening of a sound, from gentle grit to a wall of noise. Trentemøller’s noisy and dusty is that idea used as atmosphere: the haze the reviews hear in place of the original’s open guitar.
Late Night Tales is a series built on the dj mix, a continuous sequence of other artists’ tracks; the deluxe edition gives Trentemøller’s selection both mixed and unmixed, with Blue Hotel at number 16. The cover is the compiler’s own voice inside the mix.
Artistic Context
Anders Trentemøller, born in 1972 in Vordingborg, released his debut album The Last Resort in 2006 and founded his own label, In My Room, before Into the Great Wide Yonder in 2010, which moved towards live instruments and vocals. Steen Jørgensen has sung with the Copenhagen band Sort Sol since they started as the punk group Sods in 1977; Marie Fisker went on to sing on Trentemøller’s albums Lost and Fixion. For his darker remix work, compare David Lynch, Karen O – Pinky’s Dream (Trentemøller Remix Instrumental).
Impact and Reception
Isaak’s Blue Hotel was the second single from his 1987 album Chris Isaak, a hit in France and, after a 1991 re-release, in the UK Top 20. Magnet ran the two versions side by side and judged that Trentemøller did a fine job of modernising it. Play it after the original and listen for what stays.
