Can's "Mother Sky,"
performed by Th' Faith Healers

A reworking of a 14-and-a-half-minute song by Can, the largely undiscovered Krautrock outfit pretentious critics occasionally tout as "the most influential rock band of all time," seemed a bold choice for inclusion on Th' Faith Healers' debut album, Lido.

Then again, the oddly named outfit, whose drummer once claimed its missing "e" had been stolen by Thee Hypnotics, was never an easy one to pin down. The group emerged from the Camden scene in North London in the early '90s, became the first signing to Too Pure and lent its drummer to Stereolab, which, along with PJ Harvey, rounded out that record label's still-unmatched three-pronged attack.

After three solid, punk-tinged noise rock EPs, Th' Healers had been established as a force to be reckoned with. Fusing swooping, windmilling guitar with repetitive Krautrock grooves and minimalist, cryptic lyrics, the group dropped a bomb with the release of Lido. Th' Healers' packed a furious energy that owed as much to the Pixies, punk rock and The Velvet Underground as it did to German bands of the late '60s and '70s. Prompting Spin to call the Healers "the greatest band in the world" (this was in '92, when Spin wasn't half bad), Lido is regarded by indie-rock enthusiasts as an inexplicably under-discovered classic. The slinky "Don't Jones Me"— a must on any mix compiled for someone with that last name — is incredibly hip and wonderfully timeless.

Th' Healers take Can's original, with its heavy emphasis on percussion and acoustic guitar, and turn it over to Tom Cullinan's vicious electric guitar playing. The crunching, crackling, crashing reinvention fits perfectly on Lido, lodged between the woozy "Love Song" and the slacker anthem "It's Easy Being You." Two tracks before the droning, reverby closer, "Spin 1/2," it offers a hint at what's to come.

No one alive can understand Damo Suzuki's original lyrics, so Roxanne Stephen improvises, dropping everything but one phrase along the lines of "I think madness is too pure like mother sky." Stephen doesn't so much sing the line as half-sing, half-yell it, and a distancing, reverby bit of studio wizardry makes her voice sound as if it's filtered through a thick fog. Her repetition of this phrase so many times it actually begins to take on meaning only adds to the effect.

The band tears through the song with aplomb, adding a fire and energy barely hinted at Can's jammy, near-perfect original. The whole thing clocks in at 4:17, less than one-third the length of Can's version, which first appeared in the 1970 film Deep End and later on the Soundtracks compilation LP.

After Lido, the group released a few more singles and a darker, slick-yet-terrific album called Imaginary Friend before calling it quits. Cullinan went on to form Quickspace Supersport, who after a lineup change re-emerged as Quickspace, a group that's put out great work ever since.

— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)