“I see a pop hit as a common good”: Soap&Skin on her cover album “TORSO” (Pias records). In an FM4 interview, songwriter, musician, producer and actress Anja Plaschg talks about the challenges of appropriation, David Bowie and Lana del Rey and her moment of triumph on the album. This month’s “FM4 Soundpark recommends” goes to: Soap&Skin’s “TORSO” – her long-awaited cover album.
Once upon a time, there was a music festival in Krems an der Donau where an Austrian superstar gave a legendary performance. It was the year 2022, it was the Danube Festival and it was none other than Anja Plaschg: back then, she played a live set exclusively with cover versions as Soap&Skin. Legend has it that this gave rise to the idea of filling an entire album with songs by others. In an interview with FM4 editor Katharina Seidler, however, the songwriter, musician, producer and actress talks about a much earlier spark of origin: “The question had been on my mind for a long time and I had a certain reluctance or resistance within me to tackle it. I had to clarify for myself whether I could stand up to it in an album version like this.”
About hiding and finding
For a long time, Soap&Skin felt very comfortable with their tradition of scattering hand-picked cover songs on individual albums. So far, she’s more or less slipped them in, on records like “Narrow” and “From Gas to Solid / you are my friend” and especially at her live concerts. ‘To cover’ also means something like ‘to conceal or veil’. With her new album “TORSO”, the game of hide and seek is now over for Plaschg. Anyone who has experienced Soap&Skin live before will meet some old acquaintances on this record.
“I sort of just sat across from the repertoire and thought about it. Some songs were very clear that I wanted to release them because they have been with me for so long. For example, “Pale Blue Eyes” [by The Velvet Underground] or Cat Power’s “Maybe Not”. But there are also some that I decided against in the end, such as my Kelly Family versions.” Anja Plaschg laughs furtively when she talks about this cult 90s family band.
Okay, so no Kelly Family, but other songs that are known and loved around the world have been collected by Soap&Skin on “TORSO”. One track on her list, for example, has half a billion Spotify plays in its original version. It is called “Mystery of Love” and was originally written by Sufjan Stevens for the queer coming-of-age film “Call Me By Your Name”. In Soap&Skin’s version, the song became a hopeful album opener.
“I wanted to draw it even more into the darkness”
“TORSO” is a great example of how music can happen to some artists. Sometimes the songs come to you and force themselves on you, sometimes you desperately search for them yourself and work hard on them. Soap&Skin is a master at covering, because she makes the songs completely her own in her unique arrangements with her ensemble – with timpani and trumpets, so to speak. Anja Plaschg dared to tackle David Bowie’s last album “Blackstar” (released in 2016, just two days before the anniversary of his death) and made the song “Girl Loves Me” her own: “I was never a big David Bowie fan, but this album really hit me and touched me and stayed with me for a long time. I felt the need to make the song even more fossilized in terms of sound and to draw it even more into the darkness, so that this Gaganess meets something dark.”
The music video for “Girl Loves Me” is a masterpiece in itself – a kind of “Mad Max” flick, shot in the wooded Alpine hell of Austria. And in the middle of it all is Anja Plaschg, who can now also be seen as an excellent leading actress in the movie “Des Teufels Bad”. Perhaps this role was also a bit of inspiration for the music clip.
How to heal
There is no basic recipe that Soap&Skin adheres to in her adaptations. In the end, however, the content of the lyrics has to match a certain basic attitude of the musician. This is another reason why she often changes individual words – or, as in the case of a Lana del Rey song, the entire meaning. “I actually really reversed the lyrics and the meaning [of “Gods and Monsters”]; from a masochistic self that somehow romanticizes a form of violence. I turned away from that. For me, working on it was very healing and a bit of a triumph.”
You’re not that medicine I need
Fame, liquor, shove – that is nothing holy
Put your hands off my waist
Do it quickly
Me and God we will get along so now I sing
In Soap&Skin’s version of “Gods and Monsters”, the person reclaims their autonomy and puts an offender in his place. Because the original lyrics have been so heavily edited, “Gods and Monsters” is released exclusively as a digital bonus track.
“It’s much more of a dialogue”
Anja Plaschg is not intimidated by pop songs like this one or the 4 Non Blondes global hit “What’s Up”, quite the opposite: “Because perhaps I do feel that a pop hit is a common good.” With her album, Soap&Skin is now making her adaptations of these songs part of the democratic commons. For the Styrian musician, the release feels both completely different and yet similar to the release of self-written tracks: “I still put my name on it, but it’s much more of a dialog, also with the artists who wrote this music.” Another layer in music that is already bursting with complexity.
Anja Plaschg also encounters herself on “TORSO”. If you study the track list carefully, you will quickly find the French piano drama “Voyage Voyage”, first turned into a pop hit by Desireless in 1986 and revived by Plaschg on her second album “Narrow”. Since then, this number has accompanied Soap&Skin, it has grown live over the years and now there is a “Lifetime Version” on “TORSO”: “The existentialism in it has grown in recent years, as has the expression and what I feel when I perform it.”
Has Anja Plaschg ever failed at a cover version? “Yes, I have failed before. One thing I definitely realized was that it’s not enough to simply love a song very much to make a cover version that I can do something with.” Neil Young’s “Natural Beauty”, for example, didn’t make it onto the record. But what is not yet can still be done in the future. For the moment and for eternity, “TORSO” is now finally a collection of the much applauded songs that Soap&Skin has already mastered on the stages of this world. And a few more dark surprises.
Translated from the German original by Arianna Alfreds.