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Neko Case: "Duchess"
For this edition of Cover Friday, I’d like to offer, for your listening pleasure, “Duchess," originally written and recorded by Scott Walker in 1969 but covered by Neko Case on her 1997 debut album, The Virginian. It’s one of my favorite Neko Case performances, and somehow I feel guilty saying that because she has so many great original songs. But I suppose I shouldn’t feel too bad, since with a voice and style like hers, she made it her own.
I heard Case’s version before Walker’s, so I’m inclined to prefer the cover, but his is excellent as well. Scott Walker is one of the more mysterious figures in popular music, emerging as a solo artist in the late ’60s following the breakup of his previous group, The Walker Brothers, who were quite big in the U.K. (they had only a couple of minor hits in the U.S.: “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” and “Make It Easy on Yourself”). Walker’s limited chart success as a solo artist came exclusively in the U.K. — he never made an impact in the U.S., likely due to his very theatrical style. Despite his lack of chart success, the reclusive Walker has nonetheless been quite influential — his singing style informed the likes of David Bowie and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.
Neko Case took Walker’s great “Duchess” (an excellent album track, but not one that was a hit for him) and punched up the energy level a few notches with her spectacular voice. Her cover has a slightly faster tempo yet is similar in instrumentation, although where Walker had strings as accompaniment, Case has the swell of an organ, which lends an earthier feel to the proceedings. Where Walker is somewhat detached, Case is more emotive, leading one to suspect that Walker’s feelings for Duchess, whoever she may be, are somewhat offhand, while Case cares more genuinely about her. Case sings the lyrics from the same perspective, not attempting to change Duchess to a male character; then again, “Duke” wouldn’t have worked very well in the lyrics as a replacement. So whereas Walker’s version seems to be a love song to an older woman, Case's version feels like she is singing of her nonromantic admiration for this woman, tinged with a sense of sadness. It’s a majestic cover that exceeds the impact of the original, one of those rare cases where the covering artist has discovered something in the song that the original artist didn’t even know was there. (And to be clear, that something was not that there was a "t" in the title, no matter what Spotify tries to tell you — she had it spelled correctly on her album cover.)
Original post date: September 30, 2011