The ever-more-sexy 70s-cop-show iteration of Sheffield rockers Arctic Monkeys are currently on tour in France, and the other day unleashed a spot-on cover of Elvis Costello and the Attractions’ 1978 classic ‘Lipstick Vogue’.
Wanna see a video? Well you’re in luck, my friend:
Nice to hear Matt Helders stretching his legs on the drums again after his hands-off approach to recent sixth LP Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino.
“I wanna play a cover for you now, Lyon,” Alex Turner declared in his weird new voice to the audience before cracking on.
“It’s a cover of Elvis Costello and The Attractions, and we’d have normally dedicated this song to a friend of ours who is in the audience tonight – but tonight, it’s for the man himself.
“Get well soon.”
You’ll recall that Costello has only just had surgery for a “small but very aggressive cancerous malignancy”, and while he was determined to uphold his commitments on tour this year “it was impossible to judge how this advisory would line up with the demands on a traveling musician, playing 90-minute to two-hour plus performances on a nightly basis.”
A statement to his fans online continued: “The spirit has been more than willing but I have to now accept that it is going to take longer than I would have wished for me to recover my full strength," he writes.”
Still, the word on the street is Elvis Costello is on the mend, and here’s hoping this barnstorming Arctic Monkeys cover will salve his sickbed spirits a little bit.
Nerdy side-note: the song actually explicitly references cancer:
“Sometimes I think that love is just a tumor / You've got to cut it out”
Get well soon indeed.
