Premiere: King Ropes reinvent Al Green’s ‘Take Me to the River’

It takes a particular skillset to turn an original song into something new. Covers are covers are covers, and there’s rarely anything new one can imprint upon the first iteration. Al Green’s 1974 song “Take Me to the River” has been attempted, for better or worse, by countless artists, most famously, perhaps, by Talking Heads four years later. On their Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads compilation, they twist the silky soul of Green’s take into a vibe-y, instinctual performance ⏤ and it makes sense it would become such an enduring piece of music. It’s inherently timeless, as David Byrne points out in their album’s liner notes, it’s a “song that combines teenage lust with baptism. Not equates, you understand, but throws them in the same stew, at least. A potent blend.”

Now, when it comes to King Ropes’ own rendition, premiering today on B-Sides & Badlands via its appropriately bizarre visual, the Bozeman, Montana-located four-piece infuse a classic melody with dirty garage-rock static. “Take me to the river / Washing me down,” frontman Dave Hollier chews up and spits out. “Won’t you cleanse my soul / Put my feet on the ground.”

His voice is gooey, getting stuck to the song’s pages like an industrial adhesive, yet there’s an equal amount of looseness to his inflection. “Hold me / Love me / Please me / Tease me / Till I can’t take no more / Take me to the river,” he dips in and out of foggy psychedelia. Such presentation heavily contrasts against the video’s quirky nature, as the band members are seen dancing erratically behind what appears to be a shower curtain or tarp; only their silhouettes are visible, as limbs writhe and pulse to the guitar’s slow-riding funk.

“Take Me to the River” is lifted from King Ropes’ upcoming covers album, Go Back Where They Came From, dropping everywhere next Friday (May 22). “Most of what I know about songwriting I’ve learned by covering other people’s songs,” Hollier offers. “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.”

The band drags the listener through the annals of pop music, including other such covers as Steve Earle’s “Transcendental Blues,” Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” and Woody Guthrie, Billy Bragg, and Wilco’s “Eisler on the Go.” Hollier’s greatest hope is “this genre bending thing isn’t too heavy-handed, but I think that this record is a pretty upfront statement of us having a lot of different music that we love and are influenced by.”

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