News

Scarlett Johansson covers the Cure

4:49 p.m. · July 16, 2008 · by Jim Allen

Roll over, Tom Waits, and tell Robert Smith the news. Apparently not content with reinterpreting the Waits catalog on her recent album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, Scarlett Johansson has released a live EP available now through iTunes, which contains not only her Waits covers but a version of the Cure's classic "Boys Don't Cry."

The original recording, from the Cure's very first album, was a frothy, bittersweet piece of power pop, probably one of the perkiest-sounding things the band ever committed to tape. But as with her Waits wanderings, Johansson has reinvented "Boys Don't Cry" as a narcotized, pass-the-cough-syrup blend of neo-shoegaze and semi-psychedelic haze. If nothing else, maybe it well help to raise the goth granddaddies' profile as they inch closer to the release of their new album later this year.