Musicians need to tread pretty damn carefully when it comes to recording Nirvana tributes.
Never mind the whole legion of Kurt Cobain devotees ready with their proverbial knives and forks to tear apart anyone that dares sully the legacy of the grunge-ear figurehead, there’s Courtney Love to deal with.
All which makes a one-woman electronic tribute to one of Nirvana’s signature hits using naught but a keyboard and a looper unit all the more daring.
Introducing Kawehi, the Hawaiian-born, Kansas-based performer who’s taken a rather impressive stab at Nirvana’s 1993 hit ‘Heart Shaped Box’.
While you might take one look at her lavish surroundings – full glass of wine sat atop a wood-varnished desk with all the gothic trimmings – and roll your eyes, don’t be so quick to dismiss it.
Kawehi ably re-imagines the In Utero single as a brooding electro-anthem for the Lorde generation. Initially building the foundations with a nexus of textured vocal tricks and looped beats, her version is almost unrecognisable until she starts keying samples of Cobain’s serrated guitar lines, before leaning into the lyrics with an affected croon. It’s effortlessly cool yet maintains the original’s creepy tone.
Kawehi’s homemade cover isn’t a one-trick pony either, she’s found a large online following already for similarly unique bedroom-produced video cover versions of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’, Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Closer’, as well as Michael Jackson and Ellie Goulding songs.
The intriguing Nirvana tribute is actually the result of a crowdfunding campaign started by Kawehi on Kickstarter, the first in a new covers series entitled Robot Heart where pledgers decided on what tune the one-woman band is set to cover, as Music Feeds reports.
Aiming for a total of $3,000, the Robot Heart campaign eventually smashed its target nearly ten times over, the final tally reaching $28,914 from 407 very dedicated backers.
The real question is whether Kawehi’s ‘Heart Shaped Box’ has the tick of approval from Courtney Love. Surprisingly, yes, with Love calling the looped rendition of the Nirvana classic “genius” in a consenting tweet. All the more shocking given that Love has previously lambasted Lana Del Rey for covering the very same tune on her Australian Tour.
