Amanda “F@cking” Palmer and Rhiannon “I accept this award” Giddens have teamed up to record a version of the Portishead song ‘It’s a Fire‘ to raise money to support the Free Black University Fund. The song can be purchased and downloaded from Bandcamp. With lyrics including “‘Cause this life is a farce, I can’t breathe through this mask, like a fool, so breathe on, sister breathe on” it’s a song that speaks incredibly well to our times.
Speaking of the song Amanda Palmer has said “there is something about this song that speaks to a deeper connection between things happening right now. Black Lives Mattering, COVID, fear and trust are all colliding with one another…I wanted this cover version to sound more like a dark closet talk between two friends…hanging onto each other for dear life whispering, ‘we’re gonna make it out of here.’”
The song was recorded under Covid conditions and with the principal artists separated by a vast distance, as Rhiannon Giddens comments “It was a delight to work on this with Amanda Palmer. It felt so good to make some art together, even separated by half a world. We all need to take a collective breath together, and breathe on…it’s all of us or none of us.”
