Le Volume Courbe & Terry Hall cover Daniel Johnston’s “Mind Contorted” w/ Noel Gallagher (listen)

Karma Oak

Le Volume Courbe, aka Charlotte Marionneau, will release new EP Fourteen Years this Friday. It's her first record in five years and the first of three EPs she's releasing that will also make up her new album that's due next year. The EP features a cover of Daniel Johnston's "Mind Contorted," performed as a duet with The Specials' Terry Hall and also features guitar from Noel Gallagher. It's a lovely cover, gentle and acoustic with Gallagher's lightly psychedelic playing woven throughout. Charlotte and Terry's voices sound great together.

“I chose to cover Daniel Johnston’s ‘Mind Contorted’ with Terry because we are both huge fans of his," Marionneau tells us of how the cover came to be. "Terry and I met in 2005 as we shared the same label (Honest Jons) and became friends. I listened to all of Daniel’s albums carefully and picked ‘Mind Contorted’ and ‘Story Of An Artist’ and recorded them both with Terry, his son Theodore and Kevin Shields in my flat in London in 2012."

As to how Gallagher ended up on the finished track and Kevin Shields didn't, Charlotte tells us, “earlier this year I decided to finally mix it I wanted Kevin to re-do his guitar parts and asked him. He agreed, but Kevin being in Ireland and Kevin being Kevin, I didn’t want to wait a year so I asked Noel (Gallagher) if he didn’t mind stepping in. I asked him on Tuesday and he said, ‘OK. Friday 2pm!’ Et voila!” The song, which comes with a trippy video by Spencer Bewley, premieres in this post and you can watch that below.

Shields is on Le Volume Courbe's 2005 debut album, I Killed My Best Friend, as is Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval. As for Gallagher, Marionneau spent the last few years as scissors player -- not a typo -- in his band High Flying Birds.