Sounds like a British TV sit-com from the 1990s starring Ronnie Barker and David Jason and set in an inner city pub but it turns out to be, of all the things I didn’t expect, a Velvet Underground cover from Sweden’s Flora Smith.
Flora has featured a couple of times here previously, and this isn’t the first time she’s made a cover. In fact the previous song was one, of The Beatles’ ‘Something’.
Lou Reed wrote ‘After Hours’ but felt like he couldn’t sing it as it was too innocent and pure for him. He let the drummer, Maureen Tucker, sing it, despite her not being a singer at all.
I had a listen to the original first, one that was released well over 50 years ago. Apart from the fact that Maureen was out of tune on a few occasions while Flora keeps firmly in it, there isn’t a huge difference between the two apart from a false ending. It isn’t a Death Metal version, like Disturbed’s slaughter of ‘The Sound of Silence’.
What Flora has done though is to slow the tempo down ever so slightly and to move it subtly into smoochy jazz night club territory complete with deft brushwork on the kit. Which is perfectly fine. It is after all a ‘what happens behind the bedroom door stays behind the bedroom door’ type of song.
Vocally, Flora owns the song. Her voice seems to be maturing nicely while she can still deliver teenage purity on demand.
She assuredly has a big future in front of her. The only slight concern I have is not to overdo the cover songs, even though I frequently ‘advise’ artists of covers I think would fit them well! She has already shown she can write perfectly good songs of her own and I’m really looking forward to hearing more of those.
Flora is currently working on her debut album, which will be released in October 2025.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flora.smith.37625
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/florassmith/
