Rhino’s Got You Covered: Faster Pussycat, Gene Vincent, Kronos Quartet, and Echosmith

It’s Wednesday, so it must be time to take another dip into the Rhino catalog and trot out a new quartet of cover songs that you may or may not have heard before. Let’s get started, shall we?

• Faster Pussycat, “You’re So Vain” (1990): This Carly Simon cover made its debut on Rubáiyát, an Elektra Records compilation which found the label commemorating their 40^th anniversary by inviting their current artists to cover songs by other artists who’d been on the label over the course of their history. Yes, it’s given a thoroughly metallic treatment, but it’s a lot of fun.

• Gene Vincent, “You Are My Sunshine” (1964): After beginning his career on Capitol Records, the rock ‘n’ roll / rockabilly legend jumped to Columbia for a few albums, the first of which was SHAKIN’ UP A STORM. This track closes the LP, and it rocks pretty hard for that era, but the whole album is an underrated classic.

• Kronos Quartet, “Purple Haze” (1986): The San Francisco string quartet have found considerable success over the years with their interpretations of various works by Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Terry Riley, Philip Glass... Oh, the list goes on, of course, but you just can’t beat their Hendrix cover. (Well, maybe with their cover of Television’s “Marquee Moon.”)

• Echosmith, “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” (2016): You know how much we here at Rhino love Record Store Day, so if you paid attention to our posts that promote our releases for those days, then you might’ve picked up a copy of this 7” single, which featured the original Talking Heads version on the A-side.