Daniel Carlson gets ‘Covered In Gold’ with new single

“Yeah right, ‘Covered In Gold’, the fast one…” Well tempo is of course relative and, when comparing the gait of this earwormy groove with typical 2022 radio fare, “fast” not be the word that comes to mind on a first listen to Carlson’s new single but, when looking at his output over the years, this is something a bit different. Propelled by Earl Harvin’s drums and Carlson’s picked bass it works its way from enigmatic verse to infectious chorus. Add Jebin Bruni’s upright piano (“can you do something like McCartney’s part in ‘For You Blue’?”) and Chris Bruce’s layered guitars and it’s a 70s radio hit that never was (where’s that time machine when you need it?).

The song itself tells – in Carlson’s typically vague way – a story of envy. “It’s mainly about someone I used to know, a musician friend who just never seemed to put a foot wrong. Creatively, he was always miles ahead of me and commercially it was just another universe. He was on a major label and toured all the time and all that. Of course, on one level I was deeply envious, but I also saw how trapped by that success he became. Musically it seemed like he wasn’t really driving what he was doing after a while, like things were getting decided by committee and dictated by financial concerns: his, his label’s, his band’s. I hadn’t seen him for a few years, and I went to a show right before the pandemic and he was talking about not feeling like he was in control of what he was doing and how he was struggling with that. And that stuck with me. Of course, I turned the lyric around a bit, but that’s really the core of what it’s about: envy and greener grass and all that.”

In terms of the sound of the track itself, it began with a drum loop, bass part, and embryonic melody that was a lot less groovy (and catchy) than what ended up on the record. But an afternoon spent at Earl’s studio in Berlin got them much closer, with Earl’s loping groove creating a framework for it all to hang off of. After Chris and Jebin did their things, co-producer Neal Ostrovsky had a half dozen suggestions – among them backup vocal parts and a synthesizer ostinato that underpins the choruses – that got it to the finish line.

So, a hit? Well maybe not in 2022, but we can dream right?

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