With Georgia investigating an alleged hacking attempt into the state’s voter registration system, we’re reminded of just how easy it is to hack an election. And that’s just one thing we have to worry about. Hackers are stealing private Facebook messages, inserting malicious microchips into household items and military systems, and now they can even control your brain.
With all of these stories currently in the news, it’s no wonder Parquet Courts is releasing a Neil Young cover about the robots taking over. (Ironically, they’re releasing it exclusively on Amazon, one of the companies whose servers were reportedly compromised by those Chinese microchips.)
“We R in Control” is a deep cut off of Neil Young’s synth-heavy, Kraftwerk-influenced 1982 album, Trans. The Parquet Courts version doesn’t use the Sennheiser vocoder VSM201 like Young did to WTF effect, which makes theirs more punk than electro. But there’s still a dystopian edge to lyrics like “We control the data banks / We control the think tanks / We control the flow of air / We’re controlling traffic lights / We control computer flights.”
Austin Brown of Parquet Courts explains, in a statement, why they started covering the song during the Human Performance seasions: “I’m a big fan of whenever an artist does something different from what they’re known for – for instance, Bob Dylan’s gospel/Christian period. And I have a similar affection for Neil Young’s electronic record. This is my favorite song off it.”
This isn’t the first time a song off of the divisive album has been covered by indie darlings. Sonic Youth released their version of the similarly-themed “Computer Age” in 1989.
