Who Covered It Best: Cat Power Does Tom Waits One Better for “Yesterday Is Here”

Who Covered It Best: Cat Power Does Tom Waits One Better for “Yesterday Is Here”: "

It’s hard to look past Cat Power when thinking about cover songs. After all, she’s released at least equal to if not more cover songs than originals over the course of her career thus far. Some of her covers have been very vanilla, generally with the more we get of them. But, and there’s a big but, all of that middling did produce one cover specifically that, in my mind, is arguably better than the original. And it comes in the form of her cover of Tom Waits’ “Yesterday Is Here”, which can be found on his 1987 album Frank’s Wild Years.

Frank’s Wild Years shares its title with the dream-state, everyman-hero theatrical play of the same name, in which Waits and other collaborators, mostly his wife Kathleen Brennan, wrote the songs. In fact, the whole thing is based on the song “Frank’s Wild Years”, which appeared a few years earlier in ’83 on Swordfishtrombones. Every song here tells a story, and it’s easy to see why a late, side-one album track like “Yesterday Is Here” can be overshadowed by ones that come before it: “Hang on St. Christopher”, “Temptation”, “Innocent When You Dream (Barroom).”

Waits’ version sounds more like a it should soundtrack a Western, lilting and understated. Mood not particularly swinging in any real discernible direction. The lyrics get lost in the lack of urgency. And maybe that’s all the more reason why Cat Power’s version truly rises above. You can’t not hear it. She puts a particular female twist on the imagery, while, actually literally, drawing out the desperate nature found within lines like “All our dreams come true.”

Let’s first refresh our memory with the Tom Waits original:

I was listening to the Cat Power version last weekend while I was on a train heading from a small town in north Jersey for Penn Station, and there’s just something about that scene, that I once lived out so many times before, of which that song speaks, that puts a spotlight on everything. New York City indelibly creates a sense of urgency, and has a special if not tough way of putting things into perspective. You enter the island and are somewhat forced to leave everything else behind. The pace changes. The noise becomes greater, and so does the focus. Everyone on the make, everything slightly illegal. If you don’t have a reason to be there, well, it certainly doesn’t need you. It’s vigilance personified, with the idea of failure always lurking in the wings somewhere. And that’s exactly what Cat Power manages to extract from this song.

After the jump, check out Cat Power’s version, while reading more.

Cat Power, decidedly cut out the second verse of the original, but the payoff is greater for it as she goes on a freak out to put all the emphasis on “Yesterday Is Here”‘s best line: “Well tomorrow is grey skies / Tomorrow is tears.” It’s a demanding and damning version, showing up fourth on an album of all things demanding and damning. We may never get another Dear Sir or cover version like “Yesterday Is Here” from Cat Power, but then again, we should probably just feel very lucky to have these things at all.

We don’t honestly know what’s on tap for Cat Power in 2011. There have been whispers of a new album, supposedly full of originals, andt she’s currently playing some dates on the West Coast. Even though I’ve found her career a little frustrating, I remain intrigued.

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