Sharon Van Etten is the latest artist to share her contribution to the upcoming I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to The Velvet Underground & Nico compilation. Etten’s cover of “Femme Fatale”, with backup vocals from Angel Olsen, is available now ahead of I’ll Be Your Mirror‘s release next Friday via Verve Records.
Etten’s version is sparing, anchored by haunting piano and dissonant drums. Like many of the artists on I’ll Be Your Mirror, Etten updates her Velvet Underground to an era more modern than its 1967 creation. That doesn’t necessarily mean she updates it all the way, stopping short somewhere between 1960s vintage and 2020 modernism with a healthy dose of 1980s retro. The song stands as further evidence of the Velvet’s vast influence that artists can go from something like Iggy Pop and Matt Sweeney’s noise rock middle-finger “European Son” to something like “Femme Fatale”, all on the same album.
Related: Watch The Trailer For Todd Haynes’ New Velvet Underground Documentary [Video]
Also set to appear on I’ll Be Your Mirror are Matt Berninger, Courtney Barnett, Michael Stipe (R.E.M.), Kurt Vile & The Violators, St Vincent & Thomas Bartlett, Matt Berninger (The National), Thurston Moore & Bobby Gillespie, Andrew Bird & Lucius, Fontaines DC, and King Princess. The cover album was announced in July with Kurt Vile & The Violators’ rendition of “Run Run Run“.
Listen to Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen’s cover of “Femme Fatale” for I’ll Be Your Mirror: A tribute to The Velvet Underground & Nico, available here for pre-order.
Sharon Van Etten w/ Angel Olsen — “Femme Fatale” (The Velvet Underground & Nico)
[Video: Sharon Van Etten]