Photo courtesy of Ebru Yildiz
“When you’re talkin’ to yourself
And nobody’s home
You can fool yourself
You came in this world alone”
These lyrics start off the nearly ten minute epic “Estranged” off of Guns N’ Roses’ 1991 album Use Your Illusion II (to my mind, the superior of the Use Your Illusion albums – don’t @ me).
It’s a fairly bleak lyric that at the time was somewhat overshadowed by the insanity of the track’s video, which featured helicopters, live footage from huge stadiums, Slash rising from the water messiah-like to rip a solo, and Axl swimming with dolphins – basically the height of GNR’s early ’90s ‘they’ll pretty much let us do whatever we want’ excess.
The darkness of those lyrics is at the forefront, however, on the cover of that song featured on Droneflower, the new collaboration between Marissa Nadler and Stephen Brodsky (of Mutoid Man and Cave In fame), with their sombre, haunting version sounding just as epic as the original despite coming in at almost two minutes shorter. Check it out below.
Droneflower is out April 26, 2019 on Sacred Bones Records.