Emily Hines, an Ohio-born farm girl now based in Nashville, recently signed to the esteemed Keeled Scales label for the broader release of her marvelous debut LP. That album is called These Days, and today Hines has followed it up, perhaps winkingly, with a cover of "These Days," the stone-cold classic Jackson Browne song first recorded by Nico in 1967. (How many of my fellow elder millennials discovered it via The Royal Tenenbaums?) "These Days" was later recorded by Browne himself and Gregg Allman, and many others have taken a crack at it in the intervening decades. Now Hines joins their number.
The Emily Hines version of "These Days," like her album These Days, is a lush yet slightly lo-fi voyage into melancholia. Her performance of the song is sad and artful yet also loose and conversational, like a long, relaxing sigh and a tumble into bed at the end of a long day. It may be cheating to choose existing repertoire this strong, but Hines has done amazing things with the material. Listen below.
