WATCH: Hear Sade Like You’ve Never Heard Before As Sean Rowe Covers “By Your Side”

The video/track is part of the “Her Songs” EP featuring Rowe’s interpretations of tracks from Cat Power, Neko Case, Regina Spektor, Lucinda Williams, and Feist.
WATCH: Hear Sade Like You’ve Never Heard Before As Sean Rowe Covers “By Your Side”

The video/track is part of the “Her Songs” EP featuring Rowe’s interpretations of tracks from Cat Power, Neko Case, Regina Spektor, Lucinda Williams, and Feist.

Words: Nate Rogers

April 14, 2015

2015. Sean Rowe By Your Side video screenshot

Soulful porch-crooner Sean Rowe has in his possession a booming, instantly recognizable voice that sits in a very low register, just inches above the smokey depths that he sings about. But for his latest project, the Her Songs EP, Rowe is trying out a new application of his bass-y performing tone, using it in a stripped-down fashion to cover six songs written by women—songs originally delivered in a completely different vocal arrangement.

Each track on the EP was recorded in a single live take with just acoustic guitar, vocals, and, in one case, harmonica, and was recorded on video simultaneously for a two-part multimedia experience.

The whole project will be released on April 28, but ahead of that, you can check out the beautifully subdued version of Sade’s “By Your Side” below. Of the song, Rowe notes, “Nobody sounds like [Sade]. And it just felt really natural to me because I’ve always been drawn to emotional soul music.  That ’s what came first for me even before folk music. Music you don’t have to think about. You just feel it.”

The Her Songs EP is out April 28 via Anti-.