Photo illustration titled "Sandwich Sensations: Poodle 'Heroes'" from an advertisement for Hellmann's Mayonnaise, 1960
I've become acquainted with '80s drone-rockers Loop through their excellent collection of non-album singles The World in Your Eyes. The UK band was significantly ahead of its time in its singular approach, marrying a single repeated hard-rock riff to simple drumming and distorted vocals to create a brutally psychedelic listening experience. So I was very surprised to hear one of the bonus tracks on the expanded The World in Your Eyes collection, a cover of Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" that wasn't released until after Loop broke up in 1991. A couple things about this cover are odd - first, it wasn't exactly common to be covering Nick Drake in the '80s. To give you an idea of how unknown Drake was at the time, in the months following the Volkswagen commercial that used "Pink Moon", the deceased singer sold more records than he had over the previous thirty years. The second odd thing about this cover is how faithful it is to the original - Loop's Robert Hampson drops all the effects and noise to deliver a very pretty acoustic version of the song with a couple electric embellishments. It's quite lovely but unlike anything else I've heard from the Loop discography.
"Pink Moon" by Loop
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