PJ Harvey releases haunting cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Who by Fire’
The proposition alone is a gorgeous one: PJ Harvey covering Leonard Cohen. It’s enough to make fans quiver, and thankfully the execution lives up to the billing that the mind gives such a glinting collision of poetic names.
Recorded with composer Tim Phillips, the haunting cover of ‘Who by Fire’ was cut for the new Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters starring Anne-Marie Duff, Sarah Greene, Eva Birthistle and Claes Bang.
The moody premise of the series itself gives you an inclination for the feel of the track. It reads: “A delicious blend of both dark comedy and thriller, Bad Sisters follows the lives of the Garvey sisters, who are bound together by the premature death of their parents and a promise to always protect one another.”
Thus, much like the song, there are enough cracks in the darkness to let some lightness in. With this in mind, the feeling of a fresh start, which Cohen’s classic album New Skin for the Old Ceremony was all about, permeates the cover and perhaps the series perfectly.
“It was a very enjoyable day spent recording the version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Who by Fire’ for Bad Sisters,” Harvey said in a press release. “I had spoken to Sharon Horgan [writing contributor] in advance of the recording session, so I understood why she felt the song’s lyric was so perfect for the series, but also understood what nuances of Leonard’s performance she most loved, and therefore what to try and recapture but in my own way.”
Thus, she contacted a composer and got to work whisking up wonderment. “Tim Phillips and I worked together on my performance for the song. I found Tim to be an inspiring and exciting work partner which made the whole experience flow,” she continued.
Horgan herself then added: “I thought of the words of ‘Who by Fire’ soon after the series was picked up and thought how perfect it would be. Pretty soon after that, I thought of Polly’s voice singing those words and asked Apple if we could make that happen.”
Apple had the might to potentially make a dream and it was up to Horgan to convince her hero: “I had been a fan of Polly for years and was nervous when we zoomed with her. I don’t have a musical vocabulary, but I know what I wanted. But we told her our ideas and about the series—it was quite fledgling at that stage, just photos and words, nothing filmed to show her, but she got it and loved it.”
She concludes that the “tone of the whole series” was affected by PJ Harvey’s performance and that she “still can’t quite believe we pulled it off.” The first two episodes of Bad Sisters are currently on Apple TV with a new episode set to debut each Friday through October 14th.
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