Singer-songwriter Father John Misty was tapped by the Mondo Boys to contribute a The Velvet Underground cover to the soundtrack to the film Shangri-La Suite. The pair of producers have shared the FJM interpretation of “Who Loves The Sun” within a newly posted mixtape.
The Mondo Boys – Mike Griffin and Mike Schanzlin – also enlisted Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado to cover “I Found A Reason” which along with “Who Loves The Sun” originally appeared on the VU’s 1970 LP Loaded. According to Pitchfork, Rado’s session occurred over one afternoon, while Father John Misty frontman Josh Tillman’s recording happened during a single nighttime session.
Pitchfork obtained further details on the FJM session via the Mondo Boys who stated:
Josh Tillman came in during the bottleneck of the score on a Saturday night. He showed up in sunglasses and did the first few takes great. It could have just stopped there but we wanted to try a few takes “going too far” just to see what would happen. We ended up reworking the track on the fly to fit Josh’s voice, so the backing vocals and backing music were pitched up, giving it a touch of that chipmunk sound. Josh was really into it and said something like “I know you guys are going to try to fix that, but it’s really cool” and encouraged us to leave it. We re-recorded the backing music but left those pitched vocals in the final version in the film. Afterward he treated us to an exclusive Honeybear listening party in his rental car (this was just prior to its release).
Stream the Shangri-La Suite mixtape below ( “Who Loves The Sun” begins at ~2:59, “I Found A Reason” starts at ~22:22):
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