Titus Andronicus Give Dirty Punk Cover of The Weeknd's 'The Hills'

Punk outfit Titus Andronicus stopped by the indie rock station, Sirius XM U, and lead singer Patrick Stickles performed a slow ragged cover of The Weeknd's "The Hills."

According to Stereogum, Stickles has a propensity for covers at Titus Andronicus shows, although they tend to be wild, sweaty, punk covers. His take on "The Hills" is a dirty, stripped-down version utilizing just his anguished voice and a single electric guitar with some reverb on it.

"The Hills" currently sits at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 with The Weeknd also occupying the No. 1 slot with the song, "Can't Feel My Face." If somehow you've managed to avoid the song until now, it's a highly sexual piece that uses some wobbly bass, synth and Abel Tesfaye's sensual voice.

Some of the lyrics seem to take on a more desperate tone when sung by Stickles' strained voice, yelling "when I'm f***ed up it's the real me." Strip out the production, pretty voices and most of the instrumentation and you get a very different song.

Titus Andronicus released a mammoth album themselves earlier this summer titled The Most Lamentable Tragedy. It's a 29-track, hour and a half long epic album of punk, soft sweet songs, pure noise rock and on one track, "Intermission," a minute and 17 seconds of silence placed squarely in the middle of the album. It's a hard record to get into because of its hefty volume of songs and diversity of content, but definitely one of, if not the best, punk effort of the year.

The band is on tour performing in the U.S. through October before heading over to Europe for a string of dates. Visit the Titus Andronicus website for a full list of dates. Expect a lot of covers and an endless slew of songs to draw from the group's 10-year career.

Listen to the cover below and compare it to The Weeknd's original version below.

Tags

The Weeknd