Detroit Cobras, the Motown (un)cover band

The Detroit Cobras are a cover band, in a way. They cover the songs that, for the most part, have been previously uncovered, doing mostly all B-sides of some of the Motown greats. And they say they couldn't have done it anywhere other than here.

Excerpt:

By jealously guarding the ploughshares, Nagy and Ramirez have cultivated an impressively focused oeuvre. The production has gotten slightly more exotic since the early days — on the band's most recent album, Tied & True (2007), they get crazy and punish a timpani — but it's still the same source music, the same amped-up, coulda-been classics.

"I think my mom put it best when Baby (2005) came out," Nagy remembers. "She said, 'Wow, you guys have really grown up.' It's not like Phil Spector or anything, but there are a lot more layers going on."

You see, the Cobras are loyal. Loyal to their influences, loyal to the band's all-but-abandoned city of origin — potentially a rusted-out cradle for a reborn genre, Nagy likes to believe.

"That's the beauty of Detroit," she says. "In New York, you have to work five jobs just to pay the rent. Here, you can make music. We'll own this town by the end."

Read the entire article here.