Covering The Sundays is a terrible idea on paper. “Here’s Where The Story Ends” from 1990 is one of those songs that feels carved out of a single afternoon, Harriet Wheeler’s voice doing more with restraint than most singers manage with their whole range. Touch it wrong and you have desecrated something. So when I saw 808 BEACH had dragged it into a house record I braced for the worst, and then the worst never came.
The trick here is that nobody got greedy. 808 BEACH is the New York pair of John Carr and Bill Coleman, two people with enough miles on them to know exactly what not to do, and what they did was leave the bones alone. Belle Humble sings it clean and bright, the melody stays intact, and the production builds a frame around the song instead of bulldozing it. It is built for the back half of a night, that stretch where you want something that moves but still has a heart beating inside it.
What gets me is how little it strains. There is no big knowing wink, no drop where the original’s ache gets traded for a cheap rush. It just lets a great melody be a great melody on top of a groove that actually goes somewhere. The full release fans out into a stack of remixes if you want to chase it further, but the lead version is the one that earns the risk. Respect to anyone who covers something untouchable and walks away with their teeth intact.