Dear Mark Richardson,

Okay, so let me start with this: I have no problem with you as a reviewer. You gave “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” a 10.0 (…eventually), so really, we should be like best friends here.

But I must say, giving Broken Social Scene’s Love Will Tear Us Apart cover a 3 is puzzling at best. This is a song that has been covered a ton of times and the BSS version is one of the best. Hands down. For sure. Fo shizzle. Yes yes indeed.

So I’ll see grant you your point about how the song loses “power” as a waltz. And yes, a large part of what makes the Joy Division original so fantastic is the foreboding undercurrent that flows just beneath the glossy surface of the song. It sounds like legitimate suicide note, essentially, and that’s what makes it so great.

However, I think you underestimate the importance of the melancholy in the original; ethereal and sugary haze which give the song its true power. Without it, LWTUA is just another dark depressing dirge (come to think of it, like most of “Closer”). It’s the tension between these two poles, foreboding darkness and melancholic haze, that makes the Joy Division version one of the best songs of all time.

Most covers tend to too straight forward or only replicate only the darkness in the song, overlooking the lightness, and as a result they tend to suck. Versions that fall into this trap are The Cure, Nick Cave, Swans, etc.

In my mind the best covers of the song are the ones that emphasize not the darkness or power but the melancholy behind the song. By your criteria, Jose Gonzalez’s cover is a failure because it fails to emphasize the impending doom in the original. Yet, I think that Jose’s version is one of the best covers in existence BECAUSE it lacks the darkness and only contains the melancholy. Similarly, I think that Honeyroot version is similarly very strong (and in many ways a spiritual forerunner to the Broken Social Scene version) because it drops the obvious element of doom, slows the song down and focuses on the haze and melancholy. By doing this I find that the emotions conveyed by the original song are not diminished, as you argue, but emphasized. By taking a less obvious path to the crippling sadness inherent in the lyrics, artists such as Jose Gonzalez, Honeyroot, and Broken Social Scene imbibe the song with a greater power than those who would keep the tempo the same.

As a final note, I think you over look the importance of Broken Social Scene doing Love Will Tear Us Apart as a Broken Social Scene song, as opposed to a Joy Division song. This again is the failing of so many other covers; the artist covered Love Will Tear Us Apart, the Joy Division song. Broken Social Scene performed Love Will Tear Us Apart. This is an important distinction. Had BSS played an uptempo version of the song that emphasized the impending doom of the original then the song would have been a failure. To do it as a haze-filled waltz, really, was their only option and I think it worked fantastically.

All of this is why I feel you underrated the Broken Social Scene version of Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Best wishes,

Tom Williams

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