B-Side Guys

Ace of Base wrote a song about clarity. Tiffany Sammy, AKA TIFFY, buries it in fuzz and finds something truer.

The Boston multi-instrumentalist’s cover of “The Sign” doesn’t treat the 1993 Eurodance hit as a nostalgia object or an ironic gesture. It treats it as raw material. The melody was always good enough to survive the production surrounding it, and TIFFY’s version proves that by stripping away the synth sheen and rebuilding it in guitar noise and grit. What’s left is a song that sounds less like a pop memory and more like one you’re trying to hold onto.

Her frame of reference is pretty clear: Pom Pom Squad, Slow Pulp, Jay Som. That lineage of fuzz-forward indie rock where softness and distortion aren’t in opposition, where a hook can hit harder through static than through polish. TIFFY works in that same register on “The Sign,” letting the guitars do the emotional work the original handed to synthesizers. The dreamy quality survives, but it’s earned differently now, coming up through the grime rather than sitting cleanly on top of it.

There’s something worth noting in the choice of source material. Sammy has said the song is nostalgic for her, a 90s radio staple she grew up with. But nostalgia filtered through distortion is a specific thing. It acknowledges the warmth of the memory while admitting the memory is already degraded, already a little worn. That tension is what makes the cover interesting beyond its surface pleasures, and TIFFY has enough command of her own sound to make you feel it without explaining it.