Although I’m now pondering the wisdom of launching a second blog (oh, go on then: it’s www.badcoverversions.com) when I don’t even have enough time to run one, there are also gratifying surprises.

When you’ve listened to Sting violently ruining Jimi Hendrix‘s Little Wing for the tenth time, certain occurrences take place. Naturally, there are feelings of horror, confusion and the instinctive desire to stuff soft objects into the ear canals. But chiefly, it is a genuine appreciation of good music.

Bands like Team Forest thus become more vital than ever. Because now, their metronomic, economic sounds are not just blissful and gelatinous, they help shove dreadfully ill-judged music out of my mind.

Team Forest // Leave This Town On Bicycle

Cycling has a excellent, if limited role in music history – in that Team Forest‘s compatriots Kraftwerk wrote an entire album about it – and Leave This Town On Bicycle nails the both the free-wheeling fun and repetitious groove-inhabitation of cycling.

The song is frail but insistent, bright but challenging, like a cold evening’s reedy sunshine strobing through woodland as you cycle by. It’s just as mesmerising and comforting. Calm, gentle, full of promise. Lovely.

www.myspace.com/teamforest

Photograph by Stephane Charpentier.

Via Bad Panda records // Creative Commons License: BY-NC-SA 3.0