January 30th, 2008 5:05am

When I Saw Her Eyes In The Flashlight

David Byrne “Ex-Guru” – Essentially, this is David Byrne doing Fiery Furnaces karaoke. I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that he’s singing over a modified mix of the original track. It’s a great performance — it’s him being him, but also him doing his version of the unmistakable Friedberger cadence. (This may be somewhat unavoidable, given that their particular vocal rhythms are the most distinct and essential element of anything the Furnaces have ever done.) Nevertheless, even though there are moments when Byrne is clearly paying homage to the peculiarities of Eleanor’s style and the precise specificity of Matthew’s words, there are some points when Byrne’s phrasing seems to deliberately recall his own back catalog, as if to say to the listener “hey, I just want you to recognize that this isn’t too far off from, say, “Once In A Lifetime” or some other things I’ve done in the past.”

Given that he’s spent a lot of his time in this decade throwing his support behind musicians who seem to be influenced by his impressive back catalog, I get the sense that David Byrne has a strong interest in his artistic legacy. It might be vanity — I wouldn’t blame him if this was the case — but I think it’s a more to do with aesthetics. I mean, if you have a unique notion of what you want art to be like and then people start making it — even if it often sounds like a clumsy, bland version of your own juvenalia — you ought to like it right? It’s like how if I write about how I want music to be and people make it, I’m almost always pretty glad about it.

So here’s the interesting thing about this cover: There’s an extra verse that doesn’t appear on the Furnaces’ version of the song, and I don’t know whether it was written by them, or by Byrne after the fact. If it’s the latter, it’s a brilliant simulation of the Friedbergers’ lyrical style. The language is playful and incredibly vivid, with the singer recounting how she joined the cult, and the time she found the titular guru and her goons rifling through her trash in the middle of the night. I really hope that Byrne wrote it, actually. Not only because it’s so cool to see him writing in their style, but because it fits into the old folk tradition of personalizing the songs that one covers, and I really think that more people should be doing that when performing uncanonized contemporary tunes. (Click here to buy it from Thrill Jockey.)