A welcome return for the Campfire Sessions and Sarah Darling as she revisits and reinterprets songs that have either inspired her on her journey or are ones that she simply just likes. The latest trip around the licking flames does slightly tamper with the format a little, as this would be harder to recreate unless you were sitting around the fire with Fleetwood Mac however it remains a quite wonderful version.
It is of course a cover of the inescapable 2012 Katy Perry song "California Gurls", a song so over the top in production and of course replete with a mid song appearance from Mr Dogg himself, that an attempt to cover it would seem possibly foolhardy however Sarah and her producer Cheyenne Medders had other thoughts and in doing so they have taken the song almost back to when it first was plucked from the air.
What you are left with is an acoustic guitar, with an electric one in the background adding musical punctuation, along with some sympathetic percussion over which Sarah lays a restrained vocal which shines the light much more onto the lyrics where in a neat touch it is now "Katy Perry on the stereo".
The production from Cheyenne Medders is quite masterful, with guitars cleverly picking out key parts of the song that many listeners would identify with. Mercifully there is no attempt to recreate the rap section and the overall results are almost hypnotic with Sarah's vocals, divine as ever swirling around in the mix.
With new music planned for 2021 and host of online shows lined up the first on Oct 21st, Sarah seems to be well set up for whenever we can return to some sort of normal.