Inuktitut

The best cover versions result when an artist takes well-known source material and gets you to experience it in an entirely different light. On this collection of classic-rock and ’80s-pop reinterpretations, Inuk alt-folk artist Elisapie is not only translating FM-radio staples into her native tongue, she uses them as portals to vividly conjure childhood memories and the fraught history of her people. In her hands, Metallica’s bombastic power ballad “The Unforgiven” (“Isumagijunnaitaungituq”) becomes a mournful blues meditation on the soul-crushing generational effects of colonialism in her northern-Quebec community of Salluit, while Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” (“Sinnatuumait”) is transformed from a simmering account of relationship dysfunction into an impressionistic elegy for the late brother she barely knew. But even as she’s accessing painful memories, Elisapie’s voice is a beacon of beauty: Her version of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” (“Qaisimalaurittuq”) may have been inspired by the many friends and loved ones she’s lost to suicide, but her luminous torch-song delivery and the soothing brass melodies (courtesy of New York ensemble The Westerlies) exude a profound sense of hope and healing. And though the campfire makeover of her fam-jam favorite, Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” (“Uummati Attanarsimat”), may lack the original’s electro-disco pulse, its choral harmonies and swelling arrangement provide an alternate path to communal ecstasy.