Los Angeles band and QM friends Harriet have been recording a new album and releasing cover videos while they’re doing it. They put up the first session on YouTube the other day, and it’s a split of John Hiatt’s 1988 “Have A Little Faith in Me” and Frank Ocean’s recent “Lost.”
In the days before the researching wonders of the Internet, I still remember sitting in the pews during elementary school mass practice wondering what secular song was playing (“Wait a minute, this isn’t ‘Emmanuel’….”) during the Eucharistic procession that I at that point was still too young to receive. It was an instance of Catholic guilt that ate at me until I fatefully stumbled upon it while watching John Travolta romance Kirstie Alley in Look Who’s Talking Now with my brothers, a film I still now cherish despite its 0% RottenTomatoes approval rating (come on, that Charles Barkley scene!). I believe this is what they call serendipity.
The dual covers start off with the bassline from “Lost” but quickly turns into an updated “Have A Little Faith in Me.” Alex Casnoff’s chamber vocals soar on the Hiatt cover alongside shimmering reverb and a tick-tock percussion coupled with his abbreviated phrasing of the chorus that takes on a less pious, more urgent meaning to a song that even now brings me back to a marble-floored church. Is this brainwashing?
When they roll into “Lost” though, his explosive instrument fits a bit unevenly on the Tokyo-sunned Frank Ocean hook that’s unnecessarily rushed. The song itself is a bit too subdued for Casnoff’s larger-than-life wail, but I’ll take any rendition of Frank Ocean over one of Not Frank Ocean on a Thursday afternoon.
Check out the video of the performance along with audio and both originals below, and keep an eye out for a future Harriet release.