Mentioning The Lemonheads, Julieta Venegas, and Tom Tom Club in one sentence is confounding enough, but adding incessantly Canadian one-hit wonders LEN to this list is downright surreal. The list pertains to artists we’ve heard covered recently, as Chucha Santamaría tackled “Genius of Love,” while d3NdRoN gave us our ‘90s college-radio fix with “Drug Buddy.” I Can Chase Dragons!, the solo project from Plastics Revolution singer Julio Gudiño, took a kitschier route by covering 1999’s “Steal My Sunshine,” that perennial wedding/quinceañera jam (if you’re a child of the late ‘90s/early aughts). I think it’s safe to say that “Steal My Sunshine” is the only LEN song in danger of being covered, so it’s not like Gudiño went digging deep into the annals of LEN. But as far as one-hit-wonder covers go, this is a solid one.
Gudiño’s voice here bears resemblance to Ezra Koenig’s—large and young—while the music echoes the original but ultimately subdues it through hazy digital gauze and amped-up synths. He also ditched the way-precious female-led chorus and we are all the more grateful for it.
The cover appeared as a bonus track on I Can Chase Dragons!’ debut, Expansión, out on Arts & Crafts MX.
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