The sinister ten

The early Sisters Of Mercy are quite different from the band behind “First And Last And Always”, “Floodland” and - above all - “Vision Thing”: their sound is already, without a doubt, gothic, but also viscerally rock, minimal: proof of this lies in the band's influences, easily gleaned from the covers they were known to play at the time: Suicide, Stones and indeed this “1969” by Iggy Pop & co.

A magnetic track that remains so even after being reworked by the founding fathers of British gothic-rock, thanks to Andrew Eldritch's shadowy voice and the cold beats of the drum machine Doktor Avalanche.

This Mortal Coil – Song To The Siren (Tim Buckley)

The 4AD “supergroup” released their debut “It'll End In Tears” in 1984, which also features this version of Tim Buckley's “Song To The Siren”, put out as a single the year before. A hugely successful track (101 weeks on the UK Indie Chart), on which the band led by Ivo Watts-Russell, the label's boss, reinterprets the American songwriter's gorgeous “Gaelic” ballad, loading it with nocturnal atmosphere.

And what about Elizabeth Fraser's celestial voice (Cocteau Twins)?

Siouxsie And The Banshees – 20th Century Boy (T-Rex)

This version of “20th Century Boy” dates from 1979, released as the b-side of the single “The Staircase (Mystery)”: as one YouTube commenter rightly points out, it's probably the most personal reworking of Marc Bolan's classic, reinterpreted in a punk key by the most celebrated - and most imitated - female goth voice around. “Through The Looking Glass”, an album made entirely of covers, instead dates from 1987.

 Joy Division - Sister Ray (Velvet Underground)

Could the Manchester foursome be missing from this list? Unlike the prolific Banshees, Joy Division recorded only one cover, this live version of “Sister Ray”, released on the posthumous compilation “Still”.

Ian Curtis's band sounds decidedly at ease with the Velvet Underground track - after all, the avant-garde spirit of works like “Velvet Underground & Nico” or “White Light/White Heat” (which contains the track in question) is a founding pillar of post-punk.

Cinema Strange - Time (David Bowie).

This “Time” comes from the first chapter of the aforementioned “Goth Oddity”, courtesy of deathrockers Cinema Strange, active between the Nineties and the 2000s.

The track shows the Californian band at the height of their expressive power, working to make the original's cabaret atmosphere even more disorienting.

The group has sadly disbanded for some time now, but frontman Lucas Lanthier is still active, both as a solo artist and with his Deadfly Ensemble.

Malaria! - Lay Lady Lay (Bob Dylan)

Bob Dylan's country-folk is reinterpreted with flair and skill by this band, a true fixture of Berlin's underground scene in the early Eighties: a dark, obsessive version, poised between Nico and Suicide. A classic case of a cover that, while completely transforming the song's shape (and thus far from a lazy rehash), still manages to pay tribute to the original by keeping its expressive power fully intact. It appears on their final studio album, “Cheerio”, from 1993.

Founders Bettina Köster and Gudrun Gut would go on to pursue solo careers in the following years, with Köster also joining the electro-wave project “Autonervous” (2006), alongside Jessie Evans (Subtonix, The Vanishing).

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds – Muddy Water (Seldom Scene)

From bluegrass to smoky, noir crooner-club atmospheres is a long road to travel, but it becomes a short one when the reworking is handled by the Australian band fronted by Nick Cave.

His deep voice and a sad but sublime organ load with pathos a song originally conceived in the '70s yet firmly rooted in the American country tradition.

“Muddy Water” appears on “ACT III”, the third album by the Seldom Scene, released in 1973; the Bad Seeds' version instead opens “Kicking Against The Pricks”, itself also a "third work", made up entirely of cover versions.

Chameleons – Tomorrow Never Knows (Beatles)

The track that closes “Revolver”, the seventh album by the Fab Four and the first step towards their “experimental turn”, is reworked by the Chameleons, who keep its psychedelic streak intact while shifting its mood onto a purely atmospheric plane, toning down the drone/raga element.

The guitars are undoubtedly the stars of the track, sketching out boundless landscapes where Mark Burgess's voice acts as an explorer even before it acts as a guide.

A bonus track on the CD edition of “Strange Times”, the British post-punk band's third album, it doubles the length of the Beatles-esque original, clocking in at around six minutes.

Diaframma – Io ho in mente te (Equipe 84)

It seems only right, in this top ten, to also make room for the Italian scene, which has produced few well-known names but plenty of underground acts of genuine interest, rediscovered in recent years thanks to various blogs and reissues.

Florence's Diaframma undoubtedly fall into the first category, still highly active both live and in the studio, and here they take on a fine Italian beat track, reinterpreted in their unmistakable, quintessentially Eighties dark-wave style.

Originally released as a single (in 1986) by I.R.A. Records, the cover also appears on some reissues of “3 Volte Lacrime”, the band's second album.

 Einstürzende Neubauten – Sand (Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra)

The Berlin noise ensemble reinterprets, warping it in the process, this evocative ballad originally released in 1968 on “Nancy & Lee”, a collaboration between the daughter of The Voice and country-rocker Lee Hazlewood.

And it's a classy mangling indeed, entrusted to the skilled hands of these masters of industrial noise, where the psychedelic mood of the original gives way to the schizoid, dark and introverted feelings of frontman Blixa Bargeld. You'll find it as a bonus track on the CD edition of “Halber Mensch” (1985), the Neubauten's third album.