The ‘God Help The Girl’ Deathmatch

Which versions were better?

The originals by Stuart Murdoch’s side project/Belle and Sebastian’s Liberian flag (please chose your favourite excuse), or the remakes that formed part of the official soundtrack to last year’s movie?

Act Of The Apostle

Ireton’s chocolaty sultry vocals vs Browning’s lazy drawl with the same background score (or so it seems). Very much a matter of choice here, but a draw seems fair.

Both do beat the bejaysus out of the original version (actually Act Of The Apostle II) from Belle and Sebastian’s The Life Pursuit album (2006) which sounds so lifeless by comparison.

God Help The Girl

Very clear win for the film version. The original version sounds flatter and more studio sounding. Emily Browning’s voice also more captures the Phil Spector/Sixties cinema Swing sound the song was aiming for.

Pretty Eve In The Tub

Again, very clear win for the film version. This is a bit embarrassing, as Stuart Murdoch (the mastermind of the whole God Help The Girl project) sounds really dreadfully inferior here to Olly Alexander as a singer.

The harpsichord in the film version is what particularly transforms a pleasant enough but forgettable staccato song into a wonderful song, one of the film’s many highlights. Double knockout.

If You Could Speak

The guitar is slightly faster in the film version, less plodding. Is it really up to you whether you think the Catherine Ireton and Anna Miles with Stuart Murdoch or the Emily Browning and Hannah Murray with Olly Alexander vocals are better? Or is there more to it?

One of the real surprises of the movie was the way Murray’s stuffy nose vocals (probably from having a nose that appears made of solid bone and resonates like a tuning fork when she speaks or sings) compliments so perfectly Browning’s slightly crackling style.

Ireton’s voice with Anna Miles sounds too pure, too Sally Oldfield overdubbed. It would work with something like ‘Mirrors’, all woodwinds, but with a song that’s all acoustic guitars the original falls flat. Again, a win for the thespian trio.

Musician, Please Take Heed

The big epic cinema score number of the album sound identical over the two. The original has some lovely tubular bells in its favour, but the vocals let it down at the end, so a draw seems fair.

Perfection As A Hipster

Can you separate the two? They sound so identical vocals wise, despite Ireton being swapped for Browning. Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy is a delight in both, what a shame he wasn’t in the movie itself.

Come Monday Night

Draw. Two contrasting styles and it’s a matter of choice, both beautifully done in one of the sweetest songs from 2014.

I Just Want Your Jeans

Some may joke the day you get your arse kicked at singing by Hannah ‘Cassie’ Murray (doomed to forever be one Cassie or another…) is the day you should give up singing professionally altogether.

Yet the shocker here is how much Murray beats the original version hollow. She can’t sing as well – she sounds like she has a stuffy nose – but wow, how the hack amateur delivers it ten times better.

The moment even the most ardent Belle and Sebastian fan must deep down concede defeat is the line ‘For an hour on the park or an hour on the couch, with the boy of my choice if he makes me go ‘OUCH!”, I will swap all my dumb school prizes, I am open to dark surprises’.

Asya by contrast can’t seem to make up her mind if she wants to sound like an old Creole woman singing a traditional hymn or trying to sound alternately like a cut-price Edie Brickell/Tiffany or Bjork, and her sing-song delivery is forgettable.

I’ll Have To Dance With Cassie

Probably the most famous song – certainly the most loved. Again, this is a matter of taste as the backing tracks sound so similar, do you prefer Catherine Ireton’s posher vocals to Emily Browning’s more natural tones?

I’m A Down And Dusty Blonde

The quintet of Ireton, Celia Garcia, Dina Bankole, Asya and Brittany Stallings versus the duet of Browning and Murray.

Yes, the music is slightly different (inferior in the original), but again the latter do the job better vocally – the contrast in styles between Browning and Murray is more pronounced (and there’s sod all point having a duet with two identical singers) whilst they blend together superbly.

The five professional singers meanwhile don’t blend, they merge much like carol singers merge into a note perfect uniformity – nice, but not outstanding when you are doing pop songs.

Ironically, the one pick up between the two versions is that Celia Garcia’s voice worked better with the Browning and Murray version (Garcia singing in both), again because it contrasted with two different styles.

Conclusion

If you are going to get ‘God Help The Girl’, get the film soundtrack – it’s a clear winner. For something that was supposed to be a rushed job, it’s a vast improvement on the originals.

Of the ten tracks, half were done better by Alexander, Browning and Murray than by the original vocal line up, much to my surprise. It may be in part Stuart Murdoch being able to iron out flaws in the originals with the remakes, but the simple truth is the thespian trio blended nicer together and complimented the music better than their professional counterparts.

A lot of the original version vocals were rather overegged – in fact one of the standout tracks from the movie was the inclusion of the Belle and Sebastian song ‘Dress Up In You.’ Compare the light sweetness of the vocals on it to the original GHTG recordings and you’ll see where the original was trumped by the remake.

What do you think?