In November 1973 The Carpenters had another hit with Top Of The World. I didn’t like it at the time. But two decades later it spawned a rather wonderful Japanese cover version.

Recorded by Japanese punk group Shonen Knife, it first appeared on a 1995 tribute album called If I Were A Carpenter, on which the Seventies MOR duo had their hits retooled in rather livelier style by indie bands including Sonic Youth, Babes In Toyland and The Cranberries.

A year after that, Shonen Knife’s version of Top Of The World was played over the closing titles the excellent little indie film The Last Supper (featuring a young Cameron Diaz and an even younger Elisabeth Moss), providing an ironic footnote to a movie in which a house full of students invite people of various unpleasant persuasions – racists, anti-semites, homophoobes – over for dinner. And kill them.

Shonen Knife are, as you might imagine, Japanese, and blend the sound of Sixties girl groups with the prototype punk sound of The Ramones (they have a parallel musical career as a tribute band called The Osaka Ramones). At the time they made this video they consisted of sisters Naoko (guitar, vocals) and Atsuko (drums) and bassist Michie.

I remember John Peel playing them in the early Eighties; later Kurt Cobain became such a fan that he went to see them and said afterwards that the experience transformed him into “a hysterical nine-year-old girl at a Beatles concert,” inviting them to support Nirvana on their 1990 UK tour.

Astonishingly they seem to be still going, with both sisters still in the band, and have a jingle that is often played on Marc Riley’s BBC 6Music radio show.