Soulful San Fran septet Con Brio has shared a brand-new, reimagined take on a grunge classic: Nirvana‘s “Heart-Shaped Box”. To Con Brio, their take on the smash hit track from Nirvana’s third and final album, 1993’s In Utero, hold more significance than just simply being a fun cover. As Billboard explains, the idea for the cover came as the band was plotting an entire EP of reworked grunge classics. While the project never came to fruition, the band’s experience arranging and recording the cut last year in Atlanta gave them the creative spur they needed to begin work on their next full album, Explorer, due out July 6th.
As frontman Ziek McCarter tells Billboard:
We had a day off and I thought of a way I wanted to remake it and we came up with that (version) within two or three hours. … Right after that, we wrote a few more songs to propel our writing process in a positive way. We were touring a whole lot at that time and it’s hard to find time to really get seven people in a room to pump out the hits. But after [‘Heart-Shaped Box’] we were able to really dial in the writing process a little bit more. It served us well
I really feel like we’ve honored the life of not just Kurt Cobain but also Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington,” he explains. “Those were people I was listening to growing up. I loved ‘Black Hole Sun.’ I loved Chester Bennington; I loved his voice. And I feel like we have some of that same resilience they possessed in their performances if not necessarily the same way.
The fantastic Con Brio take on “Heart-Shaped Box” lends the song an almost Thriller-era Michael Jackson aesthetic, layered with downtempo breaks, swelling brass accents, and powerful psych-pop peaks as the song barrels into its cathartically howling chorus. Give it a listen below via the Con Brio SoundCloud page:
Con Brio – “Heart-Shaped Box” [Nirvana cover]
For a list of upcoming Con Brio tour dates, head to the band’s website.
[H/T Billboard]