Today, Bonner Kramer and Thurston Moore share their reimagination of “Insight” by Joy Division. It is the second single to be released in advance of their forthcoming album, They Came Like Swallows, which is due out on May 1, through Silver Current Records. The duo’s performance of Joy Division’s “Insight” is a doleful coda to They Came Like Swallows, breathing out with a solemn inner grace under Moore’s instantly stylistically recognizable guitar melodies as they weave into his and Kramer’s unison voices.
“Kramer had the idea to cover a Joy Division tune,” says Moore. “It was a left turn from the improvisations we had been tracking, though wholly in keeping with both our sensibilities of light and dark unifying in transcendent songwriting, both of us devotees of ‘the song’ as well as ‘the freedom.'”
As the lone vocal piece and only traditional ‘song’ form on the album, “Insight” is unique to this set and, as a closing statement, it draws connective lines back to the kind of dynamic, electrified melodies that wove deep, melancholy patterns into Sonic Youth’s late ’80s biosphere. In the album’s final moments, the two voices repeat the lyric “I’m not afraid anymore” as a mantra, underscoring the heavy, unsettled themes and methods that preceded it.
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