Kurt Vile’s cover of “Downbound Train” with The Violators is fantastic.
At its heart, “Downbound Train” has always been a stuck-in-one’s-own-head tale, with an undercurrent of obsessive insecurity throughout. Although it’s one of my favorites among Bruce’s catalog, I’ve always felt Bruce never quite got there on the original studio track (in my opinion, the 80s synth keeps the instrumental track from matching the brilliance of the lyrics), but Vile and his band capture the lurking menace of the song perfectly.
Watch their performance from 2011, captured in stellar (and fittingly, black and white) quality below:
Vile also recorded “Downbound Train” for his 2011 EP So Outta Reach. I don’t think it rises to the heights of the live version above, but it’s certainly worth a listen.
