Premiere: DAVIS, ‘Two Cents’ (acoustic)
Kevin Bronson on
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Fans of Davis Fetter’s catalog of hook-happy singles — and there are plenty — must have done a double-take when the songwriter resurfaced in November as the very capitalized persona DAVIS. Switching gears from catchy, lovelorn pop, Fetter channels his inner Beastie Boy on the rap-rock single “Two Cents” and its in-your-face video. Fetter is working with a new producer (whom he declines to name right now) and has been working on a full-length album at locales ranging from Utah to Nashville to L.A. The bombast, nifty wordplay and chorus have great appeal, but the song has a split personality itself. The acoustic version of “Two Cents” offers an interesting example of the myriad ways meat can be put on the bones of the skeleton of a song. Backed by Fetter’s able guitar picking and with some subtle chord changes, the alternate take becomes a vintage blues number, with Fetter taking down people who “hide behind their cell phones.” We suggest watching the video of the original first, then taking on the acoustic version. Either way, it shows that although the songwriter might have shifted directions he’s still confident in the driver’s seat.
||| Stream: “Two Cents” (acoustic)
||| Watch: The video for “Two Cents”
[…] As noted back in January, singer-songwriter Davis Fetter has undergone a personality transplant, adopting the persona DAVIS and ratcheting up the … how to put this? … in-your-faceness. If the thought of a guy who once sweetly crooned “I Won’t the Let World Break My Heart” isn’t jarring enough, there are the string of new photos in which DAVIS is flipping everybody off. Like that first single, the rap-rock romp “Two Cents,” weren’t enough. Anyway, DAVIS’s first EP “Crooked Finger” comes out Friday, and in a lesser songwriter’s hands, these five songs (and their, uh, attitude) might come off as parody. DAVIS has chops, though. The title track is a riffy, old-school playground taunt; “Touch the Sky,” shows he can do blues-metal too. But the outlier is the third track, a sweet, falsetto- and string-drenched paean right out of the ’60s Teen Idols era. Except its title is “F*ck You.” The bottom line, we suppose, is that we’ve been flipped off before, and probably will be flipped off again, but seldom has it been this much fun. […]