Track Of The Day #1055: Steve Adey - God Is In The House (Nick Cave Cover) [PREMIERE]
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Track Of The Day #1055: Steve Adey – God Is In The House (Nick Cave Cover) [PREMIERE]

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Track Of The Day #1055: Steve Adey – God Is In The House (Nick Cave Cover) [PREMIERE]

Steve Adey releases his third studio album, Do Me a Kindness on the 4th of August. The album marks Steve’s first release in four years, following The Tower of Silence. Do Me A Kindness is stunning album of analogue recorded covers including tracks by David Bowie, PJ Harvey, Morrissey, and more. We have the premiere of Adey’s deeply impressive cover of Nick Cave‘s ‘God Is In The House’ a choral version recorded in a Church with its sparse echoing instrumentation and hymnal vocal harmonies, it reverberates with an affecting power, listen below. Here’s what Steve says about the cover:

“I wouldn’t do a piano/vocal take of a Nick Cave song, especially a song taken from No More Shall We Part, probably my favourite Bad Seeds record. We recorded in a church and used a harmonium as the lead instrument. Helena (MacGilp) assembled a vocal group and we kept it really hymnal, asking the singers to feel like part of a congregation singing along rather than figuring out complicated harmonies. I added some minimal piano, mellotron and recorded some long reverb from the spire. It was about feel and balancing the instruments; two or three mics capturing the performance and the room.”

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8 Comments

  3. Not for me. He’s lost all the dark humour & sarcasm of the original, and thus completely misses the point of the song.

    Reply

      1. Odd comment – Tim says it misses the point, you respond to say it’s different. Of course it can be interpretted differently as you say but that, surely, risks it coming out worse in some people’s eyes as Tim says?

        My take is that the only good thing about Nick Cave is that he is highly Cavey and that if you like Cavey things then you’ll like Cavey. (kinda and anti-cavey take on what Tim said I think). I personally don’t, and the idea that someone might cover Cave well is ludicrous. Nothing Cavey has done can possibly benefit from being covered, as by definition a cover of a Cavey song is to take it away from Caveyness which is to make it worse as its Caveyness is the only selling point (to those who like Cavey – to people who don’t like Cavey it can have no redeeming features). Does that make sense?

        A bit like the Sex Pistols. Shit band… the only selling point is that they are the perfect stereotypical punk band and were important for 10 minutes 40 years ago – to cover them is to take something that was amazing in a certain context but objectively shit and try to improve it out of context, a context that is the only worthwhile thing about it.

        Reply

        1. If you are going to cover Cave, at least cover one of his good songs, which this most definitely isn’t; and don’t, as Wild Eye says, drain all the character out of it. Cave’s become far too fond of the tasteful piano ballad side of his work in recent years and doesn’t need these people encouraging him.

          Reply

          1. He undercuts the arch sarcasm in Nick Cave”s “God Is In the House” by amplifying the song’s torrid religious fervour.
            -Uncut magazine

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God is in the TV is an online music and culture fanzine founded in Cardiff by the editor Bill Cummings in 2003. GIITTV Bill has developed the site with the aid of a team of sub-editors and writers from across Britain, covering a wide range of music from unsigned and independent artists to major releases.