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Divine Fits Find the Nervy Post-Punk in Frank Ocean’s ‘Lost’

Divine Fits / Frank Ocean

Frank Ocean’s Essential channel ORANGE hasn’t exactly gone unheralded in the indie-rock world, but has anyone quite cut to the essence of one of its songs like Divine Fits?

As Stereogum points out, the supergroup-not-supergroup of Spoon’s Britt Daniel, Wolf Parade/Handsome Furs’ Dan Boeckner, and New Bomb Turks’ Sam Brown covered juicy ORANGE slice “Lost” last night at the Met Cafe in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Their wiry, Wire-y rendition of the drug-addled tale follows similarly logical Ocean covers by Afghan Whigs (the always soul-inflected indie luminaries tackled nostalgia, ULTRA‘s piano-splashed “Lovecrimes”), and by Nite Jewel with very worthy P:ano/No Kids man Nicholas Krgovich (the two R&B-influenced artists gave a quirky alternate take on indelible ORANGE yearner “Thinkin Bout You”).

But only Divine Fits’ version manages to make the original sound like one of their own songs, in a cover that practically works as astute music criticism. Daniel might not usually sing about “big full breasts on my baby” or “cooking dope,” but the brittle, atmospheric guitar-pop tune underscores how both Ocean and Spoon find inspiration in the pan-genre ’80s guitar workouts of Prince. Now if we can just get Ocean to cover Transference‘s perfectly ORANGE-hued “Nobody Gets Me But You.”