Following a trilogy of great records which showed the band's songwriting ingenuity, Austin's The Well try their hand at covering other people's songs, and begin with the Depeche Mode classic, I Feel You, from 1993's Songs of Faith And Devotion.
"We haven’t done covers often, we’ve done a couple," The Well vocalist Ian Graham comments on the band's first pick for a cover. "It’s great practice to get into the minds of other musicians, it’s weird, it’s out of our comfort zone. It helps progression to be out of that comfort zone, outside of our genre. There’s an obvious respect value, where we’re dealing with musicians that we admire and their creations."
Without sounding very far apart from the candidness of the original, The Well's heavy psych rock version presents a different angle of the song which has been previously covered in a more conventional manner by acts like Johnny Marr and Placebo, saw a fuller version by Apollo 440, and even had some metal renditions by Samael and Vader.
"At its core, I Feel You is a stripped-down blues song," Graham continues. "It has an ominous feel to it. What Depeche Mode did with this track was simple brilliance. The riff is great, and we wanted to roll with that, but make it more guitar-focused. Depeche Mode is one of my favorite bands to listen to because of the heavy emotional content and Dave Gahan’s vocal delivery. It’s passionate and there’s this underlying desperation or sadness there constantly that’s transcendent beyond any one song but especially encapsulated in this one. The kind of sadness that unexpectedly puts me in a good mood, uplifts. If you look at our lyrics, there’s always been a dark, romantic edge. This isn’t too off the mark."
This becomes the first of the Love Song Demos, an upcoming series of covers by the band, recorded the quarantine way, individually in their practice space, much like their recent live version of Sabbah.
Ian Graham concludes: "While Depeche Mode is known as a synth-heavy band, part of the eighties new wave, we decided to stay The Well with this cover and emulate those synth overtones and noise with affected guitar and bass."
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