Premiere: Nichole Wagner reworks Kate & Anna McGarrigle’s ‘Heartbeats Accelerating’

Kate & Anna McGarrigle compiled one of the most prolific bodies of work in all of pop music. Out of Quebec, the two spun genius compositions that transcended genre ⏤ invitationals that could be dolled up in any musical form and performed by any kind of stylist. Their song “Heartbeats Accelerating,” from their 1990 album of the same name, was famously refurbished by the one and only Linda Ronstadt for her 1993 record, Winter Light, as the consummate vocalist adjusted the song in a new wave fashion. Austin-based singer, songwriter, and musician Nichole Wagner, who calls upon such influences as Emmylou Harris and Stevie Nicks, offers up her own daring rendition.

With “Heartbeats Accelerating,” she gives it a flighty, rhythmic-pop makeover that’s also equally heavy and melancholic. Percussion trickles like broken rain sticks whose insides toppling across a dusty western plateau. Wagner’s voice catches an east-bound airstream, lilting and magnificently invigorating. “Love, love, where can you be? / Are you out there looking for me?,” she enacts a heart-bound journey.

It’s as introspective as it is seeking answers in a weary world. “Love, love, where can you be? / Love, I am waiting / Heartbeat’s accelerating,” she coos. Production rises and falls, dancing in tribal patterns, and its core emits a dazzling warmth. She continues to etch out necessary questions: “Will you come along the still? / From the river, o’er the hill? / Love, love, where can you be? / Love, I am waiting / Heartbeats accelerating.”

Wagner’s “Heartbeats Accelerating” anchors her forthcoming new EP, Dance Songs for the Apocalypse, a collection of cover tunes, expected later this year. “This was the hardest song to pick on the whole dang thing,” writes Wagner to B-Sides & Badlands over email. “We auditioned dozens of songs ⏤ going back and forth between something upbeat with an uplifting positive message (‘Yes We Can, Can’) to reggae (‘Get Up Stand Up,’ ‘You Can Get It If You Really Want’) to maybe it’s just not as bad as it looks (‘Laminated Cat,’ ‘Our House,’ ‘Box of Rain’).”

Where everything else on the project was “incredibly lyrically dense, and three of the four songs didn’t even have a clear chorus,” she says, “I needed something that had some room to breath ⏤ that was hopeful, but not cheesy. I stumbled across this song in one of those late night YouTube rabbit holes chasing Linda Ronstadt and saw just how strong the bones of this song were to support whatever production we wanted to throw at it.”

Dance Songs for the Apocalypse was produced by Justin Douglas and recorded at at King Electric Recording in Austin, Texas. For every cassette tape sale, $1 will be donated to the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. “There are so many great causes and organizations doing really important work,” she says, “but I really felt that children, especially those that are fleeing situations that are unimaginable in their home countries, need all of the additional help we can provide. While there are many groups on the borders offering immediate aide, the Young Center matches unaccompanied minors with advocates and allies through their proceedings and also works to effect systemic changes in the way that we treat immigrant children on the whole.”

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