Listen to Father John Misty Cover the Velvet Underground’s “Who Loves the Sun”

Mondo Boys are the duo of composers/producers Mike Griffin and Mike Schanzlin. Last year, they scored Eddie O’Keefe’s film Shangri-La Suite. Today, they’ve shared their soundtrack in the form of a 30-minute mixtape. It includes contributions from Father John Misty and Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, as well as Burt Reynolds (who narrated the film) and more. Misty covers the Velvet Underground’s “Who Loves the Sun” (from Loaded) while Rado plays the Velvets’ “I Found a Reason” from the same record. (You may recall that FJM claimed that Lou Reed once visited him in a dream.) Listen to the Mondo Boys’ Shangri-La Suite mixtape below. (FJM’s cover appears at 2:59 and Rado’s is at 22:22.)

In an email to Pitchfork, Mondo Boys said that they had just “one night with Father John Misty and one afternoon with Jonathan Rado to get these vocals done.” They elaborated further on working with FJM:

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).

Read “Here Is the Scandalous Father John Misty Interview You’ve Been Waiting For,” as well as our review of his new record Pure Comedy.

Watch Father John Misty at Pitchfork Music Festival Paris 2015:

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