The Future - BEGGARS

There are loads of new bands at the moment doing that La’s/The Coral/raspy-voiced scouse-jangle thing – we’re thinking of the likes of Sergeant, The Sonic Hearts, and The Troubadours - but Reading’s Beggars are the ones with the most obvious potential. They’re also the only ones you can imagine covering a song as complex and knotty as Leonard Cohen’s The Future and not sounding completely out of their comfort zone. An apocalyptic prophecy in the style of A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall that pivots on the pitch-black refrain, “I have the seen the future, brother/It is murder”, The Future featured on Cohen’s gloomy, state-of-the-nation album of the same name in 1992, and two years later emerged on the similarly tenebrous Natural Born Killers soundtrack. However, Beggars turn the song into something that’s furious and accusatory rather than cracked and fearful, with 19-year-old singer Jamie Girdler replacing Cohen’s desert-dry whisper with his own incisive, declamatory wail. The only place you’ll be able to buy The Future is at their live shows supporting Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong throughout April and May. A proper single release will emerge in May, followed by the band’s debut album in the autumn.