Number one. This is the first time that I've written about a track which I can't make a link for you to listen to a version of on youtube or wherever. I can find something here - but there's a login needed.
Number two. Despite the fact that I think that I dislike cover versions, I really don't - this is the second cover I've written about in my first hand full of posts.
So, when is a cover version good? In short, when it adds something - when you hear something that the original artist hasn't put into it. When is it bad? When it is some sort of bland knock-off of the first version. Examples of the latter are the awful Alexandra Burke version of Hallelujah, which I can't bring myself to link to here. The former would include many other versions of the same song - some of which (John Cale, Jeff Buckley) are probably better than Leonard Cohen's original.
Stina Nordenstam is who you come up with if you google "kooky, Scandinavian, singer songwriter" and ignore the top hit which is, of course, Björk. I came to her through the heartbreaking "Little Star" which formed part of the soundtrack for Romeo & Juliet. I really hope "Little Star" comes up here soon... "Sailing" is on a covers album which I've struggled to like - except this track, which is such an odd, unusual arrangement. She dispenses with most of the original tune, and uses a collection of unusual sounds, heard, at first as if from a distance or down a telephone line. You get the apparently clunkiness of the piano - which might even be a little badly tuned, and a developing richness of a string section which build in from behind.
I've played this for people who've hated it, and for people who have burst out laughing. I did the latter, but then played it more and more. From the album "People Are Strange", Stina Nordenstam seems to be inviting us to join her own strange group.
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