Mix Tape Vol. 3: Random PlayRobin Hilton
August 5, 2007
For my third installment in a continuing series of mixtapes I decided to just put my iPod on random-play and take the first 20 songs it gave me. With a few minor edits, this is what it came up with. On one occasion it gave me a books-on-tape track of David Sedaris reading from Barrel Fever. Another time it gave me a couple of tracks from albums that haven’t been released yet (I get previews of upcoming albums at my job and really can’t share those with anyone until the CDs drop). But otherwise this mix is all iPod. When I hit “shuffle” the first thing it gave me was Neil Young’s “Don’t Let it Bring You Down” and I knew immediately it was going to be a good mix.
Download a zipped file of the mix
Neil Young: “Don’t Let it Bring You Down” from After the Gold Rush
Listen to “Don’t Let it Bring You Down”
Oh thank you iPod. What a wonderful start to the mix. The thing about Neil Young is he’s got just an awful, screeching, warbly voice. But his songs are so perfectly crafted and poetic and pure that his otherwise imperfect voice sounds utterly, heartbreakingly beautiful. You either get Neil Young or you don’t. I didn’t really start to enjoy his music until my late 20s when I first heard the album Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, followed by this album. I have no idea what this particular song is about. Maybe something about how overwhelming life can be and how we should just roll with it. I don’t know. But it still resonates. For me, this is when great art works best: when I can’t explain what it means even when it makes me feel something on a deeper level than anything else.
Grandaddy: “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot” from The Sophtware Slump
Listen to “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot”
Grandaddy was a really sharp art-pop, ambient, melancholy pseudo-psychedelic rock band from California that had a run from the early ’90s to around 2006. They put out some great albums and built a sizable audience, as far as this kind of music goes. But they eventually called it quits because they were tired of being broke all the time. I was really bummed when I read that. You want to believe that great musicians, artists, etc. are at least making a living. I’m not sure, but I kind of assume this song, “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot” — which came out on the 2000 album Sophtware Slump — is all about President Bush. I’m a sucker for repeated melodic patterns that remain the same while the chords or keys change under them. This is what happens on this track with the line “Are you giving in 2000 man?” I’m also sucker for a tastefully placed choir, which enters the piece toward the end.
The National: “Fake Empire” from The Boxer
If you own an iPod and put it on random play, you might have noticed how it almost always plays a track or album you’ve just loaded on it. I loaded on this new album from The National and it fed me one of the cuts from it almost immediately. I guess it assumes if you loaded it up, you must really want to hear something from it right away. Anyway, this song is pretty cool because it lays a 4/4 pattern against a 3/4 pattern. Try tapping your foot or counting to the upper piano part. Then try do to the same with the lower bass line. The bass line is in three and the upper piano part is in four. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything to you. Or maybe you don’t care. But trust me, it’s cool… and really hard to play.
Aram Khachaturian: “Adagio” from Gayne Ballet
This fairly haunting track is from a ballet written in the early 1940s by the Russian composer Aram Khachaturian. It was first performed for Stalin, was moderately successful and has since seen only limited release outside of the former Soviet Union. I had to look all this up. I only know the song from hearing it used in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey. This is the scene where Dr. Frank Poole is jogging… in a circle, upside down inside the space station. It apparently was used in several other films, including Alien (don’t remember hearing it in that movie), Patriot Games and Ice Age 2. Hm… this makes me want to watch 2001.
Emily Haines: “Dr. Blind” from Knives Don’t Have Your Back.
Oh, I love this song. Emily Haines, apart from being incredibly beautiful, makes horribly depressing music that still manages to be catchy. This song has one of the most ridiculously infectious melodies I’ve ever heard, even though the overall tone is very bleak. I always wonder if artists know they’ve hit on something when they come up with a line like the one that runs throughout this track. Do they hear it, play it for the first time and think “Damn. That’s good!” Or do they think it’s just another song like any of the others they’ve ever written? Like Don Maclean and “American Pie.” Not the greatest song ever and certainly not the greatest song writer. But he had a moment with that one. Did he know it? Anyway… Emily Haines. She’s awesome.
Elbow: “Station Approach” from Leaders of the Free World
When you hear a song (that is, the time in your life you hear it) is just as important as the song itself. I audition a lot of albums for my job and some days I’ll tear through a whole mail bin full of CDs and hate all of them. Invariably it’s because I’m just in a bad mood and not in the right frame of mind to listen. I’ll give it a rest, come back to the same pile and end up finding real gems. I’ve always been a little suspicious of this song from the British art-rock band Elbow. Is it really brilliant? Or did I just hear it at the right time, so it resonated with me? I don’t know. But I remember driving home late one frozen winter night and hearing, for the first time, the words “…But coming home I feel like I / Designed these buildings I walk by” and it really captured somehow the way I was feeling at the time: like I lived in an imaginary world where I’ve invented or created everything around me. And then… THEN… this song just gets f’ing huge. I recommend listening to it on 10.
Eluvium: “Prelude for Time Feelers” from Copia
Listen to “Prelude for Time Feelers”
Eluvium is just one dude, this guy named Matt Cooper, who lives in Portland, Oregon. He’s one of a billion solo electronic artists in the world with a Mac, a keyboard (midi controller) and some over-the-counter programs to make music. It’s a crowded field and most of what’s being produced is mostly forgettable. I’m not sure why Eluvium stands out for me, but I think this guy knows when to push, when to pull, when to sit still and let things breathe. He uses electronics tastefully without going over the top and sinking into digital excess. (Think of nearly everything produced for the Windham Hill label in the ’80s). His melodies are tasteful — lovely, really — and he mixes just enough standard instrumentation in with the electronics to give them warmth and life and a nice organic feel. This song has a nice cinematic quality to it, like a heart-thumping story is being told, though I have no idea what that story is.
Lightning Dust: “Listened On” from Lightning Dust
I discovered this album while going through one of those mail bins at work, filled with CDs. I’ll listen to everything that comes in. But there are always a handful of discs I’ll set aside to give special attention to simply because I like the cover art. The cover for this album isn’t particularly brilliant or eye-catching. There was just an aesthetic to it that made me think this was probably something I’d like. I was right. I love how spare everything is, with the simple strum of the guitar, backing electric piano and the harmonies entering on each line. The lyrics are ambiguous enough to keep it interesting and the melody appropriately gray. I’ve heard people complain that bands today lack the sense and mastery of melody in the way that the Beatles or the Zombies or other early rock bands had. That’s largely true. But you don’t always have to jump all over the scale to get someone’s attention.
Lifestyles and Vistas: “Go to the Crossroads” from Mews Too, an Asthmatic Kitty Compilation
Listen to “Go to the Crossroads”
Man, I don’t know a thing about this band and haven’t had much luck finding anything on the Web. I came across this song while listening to a compilation put out by the independent label Asthmatic Kitty. The label site says this band is “Melissa Herwaldt Riches, wife to Aaron Riches (Royal City), a woman of ideas, poet, Catholic social activist, old friend.” But really, just listen to the song. It’s sooooo catchy and bouncy. It feels like a group of friends sitting around in someone’s living room just making up melodies and words together, rollicking around in a world where every day is sunny and filled with joy.
The Dream Academy: “Life in a Northern Town” from The Dream Academy
Listen to “Life in a Northern Town”
Well… this is embarrassing. But I can explain. Anyone who knows me, knows that I loathe ’80s pop music. I once wrote a piece arguing that the ’80s was the worst decade ever for popular music. I got death threats from readers who were not amused. (Cyndi Lauper fans were the worst). I still maintain it was the worst decade, but I’ll admit there were a handful of songs I secretly loved. Really, really embarrassing ones, too. I would usually roll up all the car windows and crank the volume whenever “The Never Ending Story” by Kajagoogoo’s Limahl or Taco’s “Puttin’ On the Ritz” came on. I also really loved this song by The Dream Academy. It has a nice, sentimental feel that I’ve been known to fall for.
Low: “Breaker” from Drums and Guns
I love Low, but lord is this a depressing song. “Our bodies break and the blood just spills and spills.” Nice opening. This song is a masterful exercise in minimalism. A few hand claps, a little drum loop and an organ. The harmonies are really tightly knit on every line and that acts to make the overall mix feel a lot fuller. I saw them perform this live and it was pretty much just as you hear it. They started a drum loop, one person clapped while the other played an organ. This is a husband-wife duo, currently on tour with their kids in tow. Amazing. There’s an awesome video for this song you can see on Youtube.
Loney, Dear: “I Am John” from Loney Noir
Loney, Dear is one of several great new bands to emerge from Sweden in recent years. I don’t what’s going on over there, but the Norse are turning out a disproportionately large number of great artists. The current surge is a lot like those scenes that came out of places like Athens, Georgia and Seattle in the ’80s and ’90s or the early British invasion. In the last couple of years Sweden has given us The Shout Out Louds, The Concretes, Peter, Bjorn and John, Jose Gonzales and several others I’m forgetting. For the most part, all these Swedish groups really have a great sense of melody… and considering they live in what I’ve always assumed was a dark, cold place, the music is incredibly upbeat and full of life. Loney, Dear (not lonely, and with a comma) is the performance name for some dude named Emil Svanangen.
mewithoutYou: “Messes of Men” from Brother, Sister
This song starts off feeling all lonely on a cold, rainy night, then suddenly erupts with explosive power. I’ve read that this Philadelphia-based band is “religious” and that their songs have Biblical allusions. But I don’t really hear it. If it’s there, it’s totally lost on me… and doesn’t matter because the music is so good. This is yet another CD I just happened to come across while picking through a huge stack one afternoon at work. The vocals are more spoken than sung and the lyrics come at you relentlessly. I always marvel at musicians who have so much to say.
mewithoutYou: “The Dryness & the Rain” from Brother, Sister
Listen to “The Dryness and the Rain”
Okay, this wasn’t really the next song my iPod gave me. I made an editorial decision to throw it into the mix because it fits so perfectly with the other mewithoutYou song listed above. On the actual CD the two songs run right into each other, so if you burn this mix to disc, be sure to put 0 seconds of space between these two tracks. I love the gothic, god-like sound the band captures on this track, with a medieval-sounding choir chanting in some strange language.
Milosh: “It’s Over” from Meme
The first time I listened to this album by the Canadian electronic artist Mike Milosh, it didn’t really sound like much of anything. But a few weeks later a friend recommend it, so I came back to it and started hearing things I hadn’t heard before. I think the poly rhythms are the real standout on each track. I keep trying to figure out how he’s getting those sounds. Milosh says “I started playing cello at the age of three and looking back on it with these older eyes I have to admit that I have always had an intense attraction to songs that are sad, soft and beautiful.” I think that sums up nicely what his music is like.
Okkervil River: “The Latest Toughs” from Black Sheep Boy
In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll say that this also isn’t the actual song my iPod gave me next in the mix. It did give an Okkervil River song, but it was from their new album that hasn’t been released yet. Since I can’t give that out, I figured I’d pull something from their previous CD. (The new record is amazing, by the way). This song, “The Latest Tough,” is pretty cryptic, as is most of Okkervil River’s stuff, and I have no idea what he’s singing about. I don’t think the song really takes off and becomes something special until about :45 seconds into it. So be patient. At the top it sounds like any other dark, brooding, indie rock song. But when the choir or falsetto voices kick in singing “we were hiding from the dark,” that’s the moment it hit me.
Silversun Pickups: “Melatonin” from Silversun Pickups
Some friends were visiting when this song came up on my stereo. Someone said, “Smashing Pumpkins?” No… but it might as well be. If you’ve ever wondered whether the Smashing Pumkpins had much of an influence on the direction of popular music, look no further than this band. Actually, when the Pumpkins more or less reunited this year for their new album, Zeitgeist, I gave it a listen and kind of thought they should just give it up and let Silversun Pickups take over where the Pumpkins left off in the late ’90s. The Pumpkins had a great run. It should have probably ended with Adore. Anyway… Silversun Pickups is a Los Angeles band. I actually first heard them on Saturday Night Live and loved them. TV has become a pretty great place to discover music, much more so than radio. Not just on shows like Saturday Night Live (which often feature basic Top 40 stuff) but on a lot of dramas and comedies like Scrubs or Six Feet Under when it was still on. Anyway… Silversun Pickups.
Trapper’s Cabin: “Running Down the Rain” from For My Friends
Listen to “Running Down the Rain”
Trapper’s Cabin is the music of Joel Nettesheim, an art-folk singer-songwriter who lives and works in the north Georgia mountains. One of my coworkers passed this CD on to me and I loved it immediately. It’s kind of discouraging in a way to know there are people out there like this guy… people who are gifted and talented, writing great songs with a great voice, etc. And nobody knows who they are. I’d love to make music full time and make a living from it, but what hope could there possibly be for me finding an audience when people like this guy, who are way better than I’ll ever be, can’t get anyone to listen? I’m probably being overly dramatic. I don’t even know anymore. But one of the things I love about this song is that it’s actually several songs in one. It morphs over time into something that bears no resemblance to the way it began. That’s great song writing. Think of the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” and the changes it goes through beginning to end.
Ed Harcourt: “Something in My Eye” from Here Be Monsters
Listen to “Something in My Eye”
I was visiting some friends in Scotland a while back and every time we were in their car, they were playing this CD. Maybe it was just the timing, being free and on vacation, etc. that made me love it. But it really is a great album, with just the right touch of glurbbles and bleeps with more standard rhythms and instrumentation. Harcourt has a solid voice. This is really just pop music done very well. Not a deeply introspective concept album or anything. I don’t think Harcourt is hugely well-known or popular in the States, but he’s a big deal in the U.K.
Lou Reed: “Street Hassle” from Street Hassle
What an odd tune to go out on. I have a love-hate affair with Lou Reed. I recognize his genius as an artist on many levels and he’s written a handful of songs I think are better than just about anything else out there. But lord has he put out some utter crap. I’m thinking specifically now of the Raven album a few years ago. This song is definitely one of his classics and features a sound no one else was exploring at the time, with these repetitive string lines and his not-really-singing singing. It doesn’t build into anything else. It ends exactly as it began. You’ve only reached the end of Reed’s narrative, which, like many of his stories, is a little creepy-icky.