Father John Misty covered Velvet Underground again, but this time he was being serious. Or as serious as Josh Tillman can allow himself to be in the guise of his lounge lizard malcontent persona. Misty took on the Loaded track “Who Loves The Sun” for last year’s Shangri-La Suite. You can hear his take on the album opener below as a part of soundtrack-spanning mixtape that was just released on Soundcloud. Misty comes in at 2:59.
Mondo Boys — the production duo that scored Shangri-La — explained how Tillman’s track came to be in an email to Pitchfork.
“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,” they said. “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.”
Tillman apparently fought for that slightly off-kilter sound to stay in.
“Josh was really into it and said something like ‘I know you guys are going to try to fix that, but it’s really coo’ and encouraged us to leave it,” the Boys explained. “We re-recorded the backing music but left those pitched vocals in the final version in the film.”
Misty famously covered Taylor Swift songs via Ryan Adams as the Velvet Underground to poke fun at Adams’ 1989 project. Then, he shared an insane reason for the recordings to antagonize the music press. There’s none of that winking here, so enjoy a rare, straightforward cover from the singer.
To hear more of Misty being himself being someone else, check out his excellent new album Pure Comedy.
