White Reaper – “Only A Shadow” (Cleaners From Venus Cover)
White Reaper had a good year last year with the release of their third full-length, You Deserve Love, on their new home at Elektra Records. The Louisville band have recorded a few covers throughout their career, including ones of Deep Purple and Nirvana — plus one for Stereogum’s ’00s covers comp.
Today, they’ve shared a new cover that they recorded during lockdown. It’s of a song by Martin Newell’s DIY pop project Cleaners From Venus, whose albums had a big reissue push in the first half of the 2010s. The song they chose, “Only A Shadow,” appears on their 1982 album Midnight Cleaners. (A Kickstarter fundraiser for a documentary about Newell was launched last month and still has a little ways to go money-wise.) White Reaper’s take on the track is gloomy and billowing and prettily ominous. Check it out below.
“Only A Shadow” is out now via Elektra.