In hindsight, the unfinished nature of “Ceilings” lent itself well to an overhaul. Not every pairing offers the same possibilities. Faye Webster discards the Police pastiche of “I Care” for a comfier, bossa nova-inflected pop-rock stroll. But the text is so garishly sarcastic that Webster—one of our finest working ironists—can’t quite finesse her way in. Julien Baker and Mustafa are similarly stranded by “Time Is Happening,” a downcast slab of pop-punk that they’ve reworked as a maudlin slowcore duet. No stranger to spinning lyrical straw into pop gold, superstar emeritus and ball-knower Elton John recorded “Seein’ Stars” as a duet, in a fashion: He grafts his rollicking piano and impressively fiery bellow onto Turnstile’s original. The result is surprisingly moving: not a passing of the torch, but a tenderly shared cigarette outside the disco.
Versions’ electronic musicians, as you’d expect, perform their traditional remix-abum functions. (Dan Deacon’s “Dreaming” is the exception, a typically wide-eyed cover featuring his patented galloping triplet kicks, plus screaming angels.) Floating Points envisions “Sole” as a peak-time techno epic, cloning the topline melody for strings. Incredibly, “Look Out for Me”—which has a screamo-adjacent chorus and a riff straight out of Battle of Los Angeles—went to a DJ, twice: Ireland’s Kettama turns in a dutiful techno treatment that suggests his collaborations with Underworld, just without the artful detours. Four Tet (who’s been spinning Floating Points’ “Sole” for a while now) lifts the bassline for a progressive house remix that’s… fine, the sort of thing you’d toss together if you found yourself co-headlining the same festival night.
In a minor upset, it’s not the DJs who alchemize something new from Never Enough: It’s the jazz musicians. Brandon Woody expands BadBadNotGood’s ska-punk brass hook from “Dreaming” into a third-stream voyage, while Shabaka Hutchings (who provided new age flute on Never Enough) morphs into an amphetamine reptile on the pummelling “Slowdive,” which splits the difference between post-bop and post-hardcore with a guillotine.
It’s to the band’s credit that Hutchings’ contribution is just one of several “let ’em cook” spots on Versions. Turnstile’s particular blend of ambition and self-effacement can be frustrating: They have an ample supply of hooks, but they tend not to catch onto anything specific. Whenever a Versions guest bends the source material to their own devices, it’s like a dare begging to be answered. The biggest dare, as it turns out, comes from Nourished by Time, the Baltimore-raised bedroom musician who’s earned a reputation as a kind of hypnogogic GTA radio station: a silk-shirt savant. His take on “Sunshower” discards almost everything save a single pitched-up phrase (“And this is where I wanna BE!”) and Lyons’ juddering bassline. Over this skeletal framework, he shakes a tambourine and croons about speeding cars and escape. The result is ethereal yet propulsive: a street-skate daydream.
Glow On had that same confident recklessness, which is why it’s a hardcore classic. Every Latin groove, drumline breakdown, and 311 homage arrived fully metabolized: a front-to-back set of surprises unveiled with the casual ease of flicking a water bottle over an overheated audience. If Never Enough felt like a drawdown from hardcore, Versions suggests the pullback is nearly complete. Only Justice Tripp’s Angel Du$t (a band he co-founded with Turnstile drummer Daniel Fang and guitarist Pat McCrory) plants a hardcore flag in a vast field of indie rockers and electronic-music producers. The sprawling scope of Versions suggests that Turnstile considers Never Enough a kind of late-stage American songbook, a catalog sturdy enough to sustain all comers. As good as Versions is at its most audacious, it’s a bummer that the next generation of hardcore iconoclasts wasn’t given a swing at it.
