Listen to bits of the Vitamin String Quartet’s takes on “Eraser” and “Banshee Beat” (among other indie favorites) here and In Rainbows there. Nervous, Apocalyptica?

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Comments (5)
  1. jim  |   Posted on Jun 5th, 2009

    The no age song is actually pretty cool. No Age by a string quartet – think about it!

  2. taylor  |   Posted on Jun 5th, 2009

    the decemberists track is nice. their music translates really well into orchestral style.

  3. john b  |   Posted on Jun 6th, 2009

    am i alone in thinking these sound really cheesy?

  4. flo  |   Posted on Jun 7th, 2009

    The Radiohead’s covers sound very bad and aren’t indispensable !! Yorke and Greenwood have done very very goog string versions of their music themselves !

  5. Clayton Tillotson  |   Posted on Jun 7th, 2009

    I’m a violinist, and i’ve got to say…string quartet arrangements of pop music NEVER sound good. They can make the music itself sound pretty cool, but the first violin always ends up playing the vocal melodies and it sucks that way. I don’t think vocal melodies have ever sounded good on violin–yes the violin is able to emulate the human voice very well, but that’s more of an opera style singing voice–singers in bands don’t use very much vibrato and violinists do. And let’s be honest, violins don’t really sound that great without vibrato. So the whole “first violin gets the vocal part” never really ends up sounding like anything but straight up cheese.

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