Katy Goodman & Greta Morgan have shared their cover of the Gun Club’s “Sex Beat.” Noisey premiered the “Sex Beat” video — directed by Morgan — which shows the duo recording the track at Los Angeles’ CompNY studio. “The original is a jittery punk number, but in the hands of the girls their song takes on a gilded Laurel Canyon earthiness,” says Noisey.
“Sex Beat” will appear on Take It, It’s Yours, Goodman & Morgan’s punk and New Wave covers record, out on Polyvinyl Records on August 26.

Individually, Katy Goodman of La Sera and Greta Morgan of Springtime Carnivore are known for sterling, melancholic pop. On their new collaborative album, Take It, It’s Yours, they combine their voices around spectral arrangements of punk and new wave classics by the Wipers, the Misfits, Bad Brains, the Replacements, Blondie, the Buzzcocks, the Jam, the Stooges, Gun Club, and Billy Idol. It’s a document of their close friendship and dedication to creative deconstruction, taking apart and piecing back together classic songs in new ways.

Working with Drew Fischer at Comp-NY Recording, the duo handled recording of the instruments themselves — Morgan on guitars, keys and drums, Goodman playing bass, both singers harmonizing together throughout. Recontextualizing and disassembling the songs, they found inventive ways to twist them to their will, from the sparklingly post-punk guitar solo in “Bastards of Young” to their shimmering girl group take on Blondie’s “Dreaming.”

Often, scrubbing back the fuzz and grime of the originals revealed “hidden messages that might be obscured by the tempos or the distortion,” Morgan says, her point particularly concerning the group’s version of the Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen In Love,” their take destined for brokenhearted teenager mixtapes.

“It definitely shows the durability of these songs,” Morgan says. “If we can re-imagine them as much as we did, it just shows how solid the skeletons of those songs are.”

Take It, It’s Yours draws its name from the end of the original version of “Bastards of Young,” an ad-libbed aside from Paul Westerberg the duo felt summed up the project in a way.

“We sort of imagined that the artists handed us these songs,” Morgan says.

“These songs helped shaped who we are,” Goodman says. “They gave us the songs, and now we get to give them back as our thank you.”

KATY GOODMAN + GRETA MORGAN | TAKE IT, IT’S YOURS
AUGUST 26, 2016 | POLYVINYL RECORDS
1. Over The Edge (Wipers)
2. Pay to Cum (Bad Brains)
3. Bastards of Young (The Replacements)
4. Sex Beat (The Gun Club)
5. Ever Fallen in Love (Buzzcocks)
6. Where Eagles Dare (The Misfits)
7. I Wanna Be Your Dog (The Stooges)
8. In the City (The Jam)
9. Dreaming (Blondie)
10. Rebel Yell (Billy Idol)