Hello!

It’s nice to be back, my extended Holiday vacation after my year end list was wonderful. Peace on Earth was a great success and felt wonderful, thank you for that. In case you missed it we raised about $3,150.00 for Toys for Tots.

I’d like to jump back in to regular blogging with a mixtape of what I have been listening to nonstop these past few weeks. No more time to write, the debates are on!

[mp3] Okkervil River – Listening to Otis Redding… (Buy)
[mp3] Someone Still Loves you Boris Yeltsin – Half-Awake (Buy)
[mp3] Grizzly Bear – Deep Blue Sea (Buy)
[mp3] Elliott Smith – Angel in the Snow (Buy)
[mp3] Death Cab for Cutie – The New Year (Buy)
[mp3] Via Audio – Oh Blah Wee (Buy)
[mp3] White Rabbits – Kid on My Shoulders (Buy)
[mp3] Arctic Monkeys – Flourescent Adolescent (Buy)
[mp3] Radiohead – 4 Minute Warning (Buy)

Merry Christmas (yes, really)

So, I figured in all the Peace on Earth related holiday cheer, it would not be right to go without a Christmas post that is free of charge. Granted all the charge from Peace on Earth is for charity, but maybe you just don’t like the lineup (though I don’t see how that is possible). I’ve always been and always will be a lover of Christmas. Regardless of religious affiliation, disgust of consumerism, etc. I simply enjoy this time of year. Whether you like it or not, Christmas comes in 50 days! It’s Three weeks until Thanksgiving! Where the heck did this year go?

[mp3] Radiohead – Winter Wonderland
[mp3] Belle & Sebastian – O Little Town of Bethlehem (Peel Session)
[mp3] Aimee Mann – I’ll Be Home for Christmas
[mp3] Clem Snide – Joy to the World
[mp3] Feist – Lo’ How a Rose ‘Er Blooming
[mp3] Pedro the Lion – God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
[mp3] Damien Rice – Happy X-mas (War is Over)
[mp3] Denison Witmer – A Christmas Song
[mp3] Low – If You Were Born Today
[mp3] Bright Eyes – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

It abruptly switched from a warm autumn to a cold winter here in Nashville and I love it, if it hasn’t yet, download this mix and break it out on the first cold night.

Back to School, Back to School

Today is a sad day friends, for today is the day that I realized (finally) classes start on Monday. Just three more days of revelry before it’s time to rest up for ye olde academic pursuits. A matter of hours until I will be trudging the sprawling campus of Middle Tennessee State University in 100+ degree heat. Ahh, I can hardly wait.

[mp3] Hot Chip – Boy From School
[mp3] Belle & Sebastian – We Rule the School
[mp3] Imaginary Baseball League – Art School
[mp3] Pipettes – School Uniform
[mp3] White Stripes – We’re Gonna Be Friends (Peel Session)

Buy these records at insound

Summer Hip-Hop

I will not and do not pretend to know all that much about hip-hop. I only know that every summer I go through a phase where I want to listen to some good underground hip-hop and that phase started this morning. Here is what I listened to.

[mp3] Atmosphere – Say Hey There
[mp3] Sharlok Poems (feat. J Beits, B-Twice, and Pigeon John) – Driven By The Facts
[mp3] Ohmega Watts & Lightheaded – That Sound
[mp3] Moka Only – Sitting on the Porch
[mp3] Visionaries – Love (Hip Hop)
[mp3] Madvillian – Red
[mp3] M.I.A. – Hombre

Floating Up To the Hole In the Sky

Bedhead’s music was generally subdued, with a polyphonic sound based on the interlocking of single-line melodies played by three electric guitars and one electric bass guitar (often played with a capo), nearly always using clean (undistorted) tones – Wikipedia

That kids, is what you and I would refer to as slo-core. I’ve long had an unhealthy obsession with slow, plodding, miserable songs; I’ve probably listened to Bedhead’s Transaction De Novo well over 150 times, and it was a point of obsession for a bit. I had the idea of making a post chronicling my slow descent into the depths of the slo-core world and all it’s beauty, but instead ended up making a post of songs that would mostly fit the tag (some much more loosely than others). If you would like to follow me down, start with Bedhead / The New Year and work back to Codeine; it’s a wonderfully miserable journey.

I remember very vividly falling in love with TW Walsh’s album Blue Laws (available for a mere seven dollars), the album from which his track below comes, and one of the most beautifully dark albums ever written. It was December 2004 – an especially cold and stark one – and I listened to that record straight through three times in one night, falling asleep somewhere during Lions, Tigers, and Bears on the third go-around. There could not have been a more perfect backdrop than the rarely-snowed-on snowy streets of Tennessee, the empty trees: back-lit a deep brown against the dim streetlights, and the wind howling through them. I seem to only have these kind of experiences with intensely morbid albums.

[mp3] Bedhead – More Than Ever
[mp3] Imaginary Baseball League – A Song No One Likes
[mp3] American Football – The Summer Ends
[mp3] Pedro the Lion – Winners Never Quit
[mp3] Ida – Laurel Blues
[mp3] TW Walsh – The Wages of Dying is Love
[mp3] Death Cab for Cutie – Stability
[mp3] Summerbirds in the Cellar – An Honest Friend
[mp3] Dirty Three – I Really Should’ve Gone Out Last Night
[mp3] American Analog Set – Choir Vandals

Dance, Dance, Dance

So, I have always hated dance music more than most people, which is why writing this post with it’s bad stock photo of dancing twenty-somethings and it’s mp3’s made in minutes by computer programs is almost making me sick, but I am in the infant stages of a back to school dance party, and thus am compiling some tolerable yet danceable music.

It’s not that I don’t know how to have fun, or am too uptight or any of the other typical defenses of dance fans, it’s just that I find the stuff repetitive, un-original, and annoying: I think the fact that someone can have a relative hit by spelling the word dance and counting to five is somewhat sickening.

All this to say, here is a small mix of stuff I have been able to stomach so far and a couple of tracks I already loved which are not at all dance music, yet still very danceable.

[mp3] Hot Chip – And I was a Boy From School….
[mp3] The Knife – We Share Our Mother’s Health
[mp3] Hot Hot Heat – Talk to me, Dance With Me
[mp3] Justice VS. Simian – We Are Your Friends
[mp3] Stars – Sleep Tonight (Junior Boys Remix)
[mp3] LCD Soundsystem – All My Friends
[mp3] Broken Social Scene – Hotel
[mp3] Thom Yorke – And it Rained All Night

Songs to Wake Up to

There is a certain kind of song that I love and don’t quite know how to explain other than calling them “wake-up songs.” Songs that build, but build very gradually and never explode, they just sort of become realized, if that makes sense. I have spent a good amount of time compiling a definitive mix of these songs, which are all part of a 50-song playlist that is played on shuffle each morning to wake me up. I think you will enjoy these a lot.

The Voxtrot song I featured in this mix really embodies the kind of song I am talking about: A repetitive open guitar riff enters, followed by some atmospheric swells and strings, then one of the most beautiful verses I have ever heard:

Open your eyes and stretch your hands
This house is clean but it is not my home
Did I make this bed
The two hands touch on two

Sometimes I think of some place colder
The sound of traffic and the way it’s worn
When you feel yourself grow up inside of here

Then the rest of the band comes in and the whole thing develops into something sweeping and beautiful without ever getting too loud or frenzied. It may very well be one of my favorite songs of the year, but I’ll talk more about that in December.

[mp3] Voxtrot – Introduction
[mp3] Cool Hand Luke – Two Pianos
[mp3] American Analog Set – She’s Half
[mp3] Christian Kiefer – Slow Rivers
[mp3] Imaginary Baseball League – The Heiress
[mp3] The Cinematic Orchestra – Into You
[mp3] Cloud Cult – Car Crash
[mp3] Fionn Regan – Snowy Atlas Mountains
[mp3] Julie Doiron – Sending the Photographs

Everyday Is Like Sunday

Sundays are pretty commonly neglected by bloggers; it is an understandable practice, but not a fair one to you kind readers. So I am going to do my darndest to stop slacking on the Sunday posts. I decided there was no better way to start than with a cheesy mix of songs that have “Sunday” or “weekend” in the title. Luckily, they’re all great.
Next week an actual Sunday morning mix will come.

[mp3] Johnny Cash – Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down
[mp3] Spoon – Sunday Morning Wednesday Night
[mp3] Art Brut – Late Sunday Evening
[mp3] Neil Young – Out on the Weekend (Live on BBC)
[mp3] Bob Dylan – Medicine Sunday (Blonde on Blonde outtake)
[mp3] The Velvet Underground & Nico – Sunday Morning
[mp3] Morrissey – Everyday Is Like Sunday

Buy any of this at Insound

Sick of Summer Mix

This will probably not be a big hit, but I am very, very, very sick of summer. I’ve always been a fan of the cooler seasons; first of all, I would take a nice autumn or winter day over a day at the beach any time, and I think coming out to the car and suffocating in the smoldering ninety-two degree heat is one of the least enjoyable things ever imaginable.

Here is a mix for those of us who enjoy gray more than blue, autumn leaves to green grass, Christmas to the fourth of July, and snow to sunshine: maybe we’re just sad bastards, but I like to think I just prefer winter.

[mp3] All-Time Quarterback – Untitled | (Buy)
It’s times like these at thirty-two degrees: cabin fever, silly day dreams

[mp3] Elliott Smith – Angel in the Snow | (Buy)
A frozen still life that fell down here to lay beside you

[mp3] American Analog Set – Slow Company | (Buy)
The guitar says it all

[mp3] Low – Last Snowstorm of the Year | (Buy)
When we were young, we wanted to die but the sound of a drum and the words of a child brought different light

[mp3] My Morning Jacket – The Bear | (Buy)
It’s a bad idea, ’cause they’re down on their luck, and they’ve lost touch with their bleeding hearts

[mp3] Arcade Fire – Cold Wind | (Buy)
In the middle of the summer, I’m not sleeping, cold wind blowing in the middle of the night

[mp3] Paul Brill – Summer Cold | (Buy)
Make a beautiful light exploding across the galaxy, she says “I know a secret …”

[mp3] Anders Parker – Winter Coat | (Buy)
It’s getting cold outside and the leaves are falling down, the days are shorter now

[mp3] Iron & Wine – Faded from the Winter | (Buy)
You’re a poem of mystery, you’re the prayer inside me, faded from the winter

[mp3] Pedro the Lion – The Longest Winter | (Buy)
The longest winter is on her way, you called her without knowing it, but now it’s too late

Elsewhere:
Stereogum dropped OKX today, a collection of original covers of Radiohead’s entire Ok Computer. Artists include David Bazan, Cold War Kids, Vampire Weekend, John Vanderslice, and Doveman.

A very interesting situation is unfolding with the new Stars album. The future of the recording industry is digital.

If I had a song I could dissolve you like sleep

Too tired to do much of any good on the writing side of things, I do however have another sleep mix for you all that is quite great for us insomniacs.

There is something noticeably better about my sleep when I fall asleep to music, it’s quite interesting really. I never wake up in the middle of the night, I feel better in the morning, and I’m calm when I wake up, rather than that awful panicky feeling.

[mp3] Rosie Thomas – If This City Never Sleeps
[mp3] Stars – Sleep Tonight (Junior Boys Remix)
[mp3] Unwed Sailor – Asleep in the Forest
[mp3] Lullaby for the Working Class – Asleep on the Subway
[mp3] The Velvet Underground & Nico – Sunday Morning
[mp3] Elliot Smith – Half Right
[mp3] Mark Eitzel – White Rosary
[mp3] Someone Still Loves you Boris Yeltsin – Let’s Get Tired
[mp3] The Places – Birds Are Waking