Next month, Bob Dylan will celebrate his 80th birthday. In honor of this momentous occasion, the singer-songwriter’s admirers over at Uncut in London have put together Dylan Revisited: a 15-track CD featuring Dylan covers by 14 artists in addition to a previously unreleased track from the man himself. Physical copies of the CD will arrive in the June issue of Uncut, and on Wednesday the Flaming Lips shared their rendition of “Lay Lady Lay” to the band’s YouTube channel.
The psych-pop outfit’s take on the Nashville Skyline track finds a delicate balance of reverence and originality. Of course, at the center of the track is enigmatic frontman, Wayne Coyne. Just because the OKC indie icons are paying tribute to a forebearer of the acoustic Greenwich Village movement doesn’t mean they are going to tone down the weirdness, which comes through via Coyne’s heavily filtered vocals. Outside of the psych-tinged singing, however, the rest of the band stays fairly true to Dylan’s acoustic architecture from the 1969 album.
Listen to the Flaming Lips’ cover of Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” for the Dylan Revisited tribute album. Scroll down to see a full tracklist and click here to order the June 2021 issue of Uncut to get a copy of the CD.
Flaming Lips – “Lay Lady Lay” (Bob Dylan)
[Video: flaminglips]