The lines between re-release, remix, cover or even mash-up are becoming increasingly blurred. Witness Florence & The Machines cover “You've Got The Love” a song for which the original version for most people is actually a remix – it wasn't until The Source put Candy Stanton's vocals over the Frankie Knuckles track “Your Love” that this became the club anthem we all now know. Since then there's been about a dozen remixes and re-covers, and Florence's cover version of the remix includes several remixes too.
More subtle is Saint Etiennes re-release of their debut album Fox Base Alpha as the re-worked Fox Base Beta. In some ways this is similiar to Paul McCartney re-releassing “Get Back” with the production he would like (stripping away strings etc), except this time the band are letting some one else re-work the production. There's a lot of trust going on there, and you wonder if the band had final sign off on the release.
The original album is an English pop classic, but I've yet to hear what the re-working sounds like. The new re-release is limited to 3,000 copies, and I'm hoping one is coming my way.