Car Seat Headrest – “Blackstar” (David Bowie Cover)

Car Seat Headrest – “Blackstar” (David Bowie Cover)

Even before we learned that it was the title track of his final-goodbye album, David Bowie’s “Blackstar” seemed like such a weird, damaged, personal song that it was hard to imagine anyone ever covering it. But someone has been covering it, and that someone is Car Seat Headrest’s indie-rock auteur Will Toledo. Toledo and his band have covered “Blackstar” at their last few live shows, and they did it as part of a live-in-studio session for Minneapolis radio station the Current yesterday. By tightening up the song’s sprawl and ditching its jazz-rock excursions, Toledo and his band have succeeded in turning “Blackstar” into something resembling an indie rock song, albeit a very particular one. (It’s weird to think that this is only the second-most impactful Bowie cover of the last 24 hours, or that Toledo has to cede first place to former SNL house band axeman G.E. Smith.) Listen to Car Seat Headrest’s version of the song below, via the Current.

Car Seat Headrest’s great album Teens Of Denial is out now on Matador.

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