Vitamin String Quartet - VSQ Performs Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey has always flirted with strings, so Vitamin String Quartet's VSQ Performs Lana Del Rey feels less like a reinvention than a homecoming.

Planned as a Record Store Day vinyl release in 2020, the album arrived while Del Rey was riding the acclaim of her 2019 album, and it treats her songbook with real affection. The Los Angeles quartet, known for the string covers heard throughout Bridgerton, strips away the beats and production to reveal the melodies at the heart of her cinematic ballads, turning twelve songs into something hushed, romantic and quietly dramatic.

"Video Games" returns in a fresh 2020 arrangement, its slow, lovelorn sway carried entirely by strings, and "Summertime Sadness" trades its pulsing beat for something more wistful and floating. "Young and Beautiful" sounds as though it was always meant for a string section, while "Brooklyn Baby" shows how gracefully her more playful, tongue-in-cheek material translates to the quartet.

It is a lovely late-night record, equal parts melancholy and glamour, with the quartet clearly relishing the old-Hollywood flourishes in Del Rey's writing. Played on a turntable, those long, sighing melodies feel right at home, and it sits naturally beside the Lana records already on your shelf, a softer, wordless echo of her world.