King Ropes is an indie rock quartet out of Bozeman, Montana featuring Dave Hollier (vocals, guitar), Ben Roth (guitar, synths), Keith Martinez (bass, synths) and Jeff Jensen (drums). The band have three releases under their belt so far, 2016’s debut full-length Dirt and follow-up Gravity and Friction sandwiching the EP Green Wolverine, and each record highlights how King Ropes craft an original sound through a deep engagement with the preceding lineage of rock artists.
The influence of musical history is even more overt in the forthcoming King Ropes record, Go Back Where They Came From. Recorded between Brooklyn and Tacoma across three sessions squeezed into breaks on tour, the album compromises entirely of covers, the band offering reworkings and interpretations of classic songs from the likes of Elton John, Steve Earle, Al Green and Talking Heads.
The goal of the record is far more than emulation. “Most of what I know about songwriting I’ve learned by covering other people’s songs,” Hollier explains. “But I’ve never been interested in copying the original version of a song. The covers I love to hear are when someone takes a great song, and makes it into something new.” A successful cover for King Ropes is not that which is closest to the original, rather a re-imagining that does justice to the creative and emotional power that the first artist worked with.
The process was therefore one of de- and reconstruction. “On this album, we’ve tried to strip the songs down to the bare bones, and then build them back up again and take them pretty far from their original context,” Hollier continues. “I’ve been thinking about cover songs for a long time, and I thought it would be fun to try a covers album with a bunch of songs from all over the map, and take those songs in a bunch of directions.”
Their version of ‘Girls Like Us’ by Mike Ferrio’s Tandy is the perfect example. Taking the slow burn country spirit of the original and pushing it into a newly vivid territory, King Ropes offer a brighter song, the added flourish of trombone from Lucy Hollier lending a real richness. With it’s quiet power, Ferrio’s original occupied a space akin to the too-dark afternoon of a deep winter sunset, and while the King Ropes version is no less wistful, there’s a longevity to the light in the track—a summer’s dusk where the sun’s honeyed drop does not come with the same sense of loss.
Check out the video by Kathy Kasic of Metamorph Films below:
Go Back Where They Came From is out on the 22nd May and you can find more on the King Ropes website.