History: A Spring Mix, 2013

We make sense of the events of our lives through story.




Download here.
(it's fixed!)

Track list:
1. "Je Pense a Toi" by Amadou et Mariam
2. "Heirloom" by Sufjan Stevens
3. "Plans" by Dinosaur Jr.
4. "This Time Around" by The Radio Dept.
5. "Junkyard" by Page France
6. "Isaac's Song" by DM Stith
7. "Foam Hands" by Destroyer
8. "Toboggan" by Breathe Owl Breathe
9. "Under Your Spell" by Desire
10. "I Didn't See It Coming" by Belle and Sebastian
11. "Inní mér syngur vitleysingur" by Sigur Rós
12. "Fast Jabroni" by Surfer Blood
13. "Zorbing" by Stornoway
14. "Impregnable Question" by Dirty Projectors
15. "Ragged Wood" by Fleet Foxes
16. "Playing Dead" by Breathe Owl Breathe

It's Summer Out There But Not in Here: A Summer Mix, 2012

Available for download here.

1. "I Was the Fool Beside You for Too Long" by Yo La Tengo.

2. "Wave Goodbye" by Ty Segall Band.

3. "Never Stops" by Deerhunter. This comes from a concept album that swirls around in insomnia, dreams, and getting trapped in dreams. It's probably been three weeks since I had a good night's sleep.

4. "It's a Wonderful Life" by Sparklehorse. People tend to assume this song is "ironic" or sardonic or sarcastic. Mark Linkous:

In a way. I got fed up with people in America thinking that my music is morose and depressing and all that. That song is like a "fuck you" to journalists, or people who are not smart enough to see what it is. But in the end, it was more about how everyday, you should pick up something, no matter how minuscule or microscopic it is, and when you go to bed, you can say I was glad that I was alive to see that. That's really what it's about.

[Tragically, Linkous, who had attempted suicide five years before this album came out, succeeded nine years after it's release. So there's that.]

5. "Wake" by the Antlers.

6. "Deuteronomy 2:10" by the Mountain Goats. "The Emims dwelt therein in times past, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims."

7. "A Belly Was Made for Wine" by Royal City.

8. "Ghost" by Neutral Milk Hotel.

9. "The Taming of the Hands that Came Back to Life" by Sunset Rubdown. I've been trying to use this on a mix for a long time. It's fantastic, great live too. As best I can tell, it's about a guy so wrapped up in the Mountain Goats music that he can no longer interact or empathize with others like a normal human being.

10. "Bows and Arrows" by the Walkmen. This song has been a loyal companion for some time.

11. "Lovecraft in Brooklyn" by the Mountain Goats. John Darnielle's a genius at sinister.

12. "Drmz" by A.A. Bondy.

13. "To Old Friends and New" by Titus Andronicus.

There Are Places We Must Go: A Spring Mix, 2012

Here's my spring mix. I'm not sure what to say about it. It lasts less than forty minutes--over ten minutes shorter than my next-shortest mix to date. Many (most?) of you will find many (most?) of the tracks pretty old hat. Stylistically, it's not exactly pushing boundaries.

Still, it matters a lot to me. I've put it together with as much thought and care as any mix I've ever made.*

*Except for my never-released winter mix, which I spent a great deal of time putting together before scrapping it and starting over. I then carefully rebuilt it and refined it, and I listened to it more than any mix I've ever put together. It has some of my favorite hip-hop tracks, my favorite Radiohead song, and some of the best transitions I've ever come up with--and I do love a good transition. Even so it never seemed quite right, and it remains isolated on my computer and on a cd in my car.

[The cover is a poorly composed photo of the Lewis & Clark (plus huddled, loyal-dog-like Sacagawea) statue downtown.]

As always, check the tracklist to ensure accuracy:

1. "I'm the Man Who Loves You" by Wilco

2. "Sweet Thing" by Van Morrison

3. "Darkmatter" by Andrew Bird

4. "Strike" by Destroyer

5. "Oh Yoko" by John Lennon

6. "Autoclave" by the Mountain Goats

7. "Icy Cave Dancers" by Breathe Owl Breathe

8. "Shelter from the Storm" by Bob Dylan

9. "Orpheo Looks Back" by Andrew Bird

Those interested may find my older mixes here. Even older ones--from 2010 and earlier--are archived here.

tucson to cville: a roadtrip mix

In lieu–for now anyway–of my recently scrapped winter mix, I have thrown together an impromptu roadtrip mix, which you can download below.

I solicited suggestions for driving albums over at the tumblr a while ago. Everyone's suggestions were uniformly excellent. I have made it all the way to "D" and have been listening on the way to the Antlers, the Doors, the National, My Morning Jacket, Washed Out, Fleet Foxes, and Jack's summer and fall mixes for the alt-country fix. I am also very excited about this winter mix.

Download the roadtrip mix here.

tucson to cville
1. "Wonder Why" by Vetiver
2. "Under the Knife" by the Rural Alberta Advantage
3. "Santa Fe" by Beirut
4. "When Christmas Came to Me" by the Singing Mechanic
5. "Take Ya' Dancin'" by say hi
6. "Midnight City" by M83
7. "On Melancholy Hill" by Gorillaz
8. "Swimming" by Breathe Owl Breathe
9. "Your Hand in Mine" by Explosions in the Sky
10. "Chicago" by Dan Miloch*
11. "Sleepyhead" by Passion Pit
12. "DLZ" by TV on the Radio
13. "This Charming Man" by the Smiths
14. "Brittany's back" by the Love Language
15. "Dig a Little Deeper" by Peter Bjorn and John
16. "Gideon" by My Morning Jacket

*This song is unfinished. Barely started, really. But it has the bones of a magnificent track. Dan was kind enough to let me publish it here anyway.

I had a winter mix. It's been basically complete for about a month. I'm scrapping it and starting over.

This would have been the opening track. Enjoy the very '90s video.

If you've ever downloaded and enjoyed one of my mixes, you should absolutely hop over to the tumblr and download my friend Bill's late-arriving summer mix. It's a gem.

And while you're over there, you must check out Dr. Birzer's contribution to our high school playlists.

A Pile of Dirty Snow at the Edge of a Parking Lot in Michigan in the Dead of Winter: A Fall Mix, 2011

[UPDATE: I recently discovered that the version of "Jason" on the mix I uploaded cuts off four minutes too early. No idea how it happened. If you've already uploaded the mix, you can simply download the correct version of that one track here. Delete the existing "Jason," and you should be good to go. If you haven't downloaded the mix yet, you can do so below. I have corrected the file.]

I pieced this mix together on Wednesday using the "on-the-go" playlists on my old fifth-generation iPod at my favorite cafe while reading about Catholic missions into rural Europe in the early modern period.

It's my least intended, least planned mix. I haven't changed a thing since leaving the cafe.

I gave no consideration to you, fine readers and listeners. Because I think of music as communal rather than individual, I generally try to make mixes that are fairly accessible. This one is probably more difficult than any of my previous mixes.

It's a quintessential headphone mix. There's nothing wrong, of course, with listening to it on a nice set of speakers or, for that matter, a crappy set. At the moment I'm playing it through my awful MacBook speakers. But I recommend finding an opportunity to listen on a set of good headphones. There are, I think, lots of little remarkable details in many of these songs and in a couple of the transitions.*

*I am aware that this paragraph makes me sound like a tool. Possibly the whole write-up sounds that way.

I don't have anything else to say except that I already feel very strongly about this mix. Give it a few listens. I hope you like it.

Song for Summer

Andrea posted her "summer theme song", which left me thinking what mine could be.

As you see, I have to go with "The Promised Land" by the Boss, courtesy of Jack's summer mix. I don't know that his mix was my favorite of the ones y'all have provided, but I love this song and it seems appropriate to my summer somehow.

Check out this fantastic live performance which I cannot embed, unfortunately.

[If I picked one from my own mix, it would probably have to be "O You With Your Skirt" by Royal City (BTW, there's a typo in the title of that track on my playlist--it says "shirt")... from Sean's, "Word Iz Life" by Poor Righteous Teachers or "Leaning on You" by the Swingin' Yo-Yo's... from Sam's, "Grounds for Divorce" by Wolf Parade or "Sukie in the Graveyard" by Belle and Sebastian]

Enjoy.

Summer Mix 2011

Please download it here. I don't have too much to say about this mix. It didn't end up quite as carefree as I intended, but it's not melancholy.

I'm not sure if I'd have made it without Sean's call for summer mixes. But I do love making them. This is my fifth summer mix in five years.

A few details:

-Just about all of my mixes have ended on a slow/somber/reflective note. I made sure to break that cycle this time around.

-I consider track two the Harold Camping Memorial Song, thanks to the opening few lines of the second track.

-I love the interplay between tracks 10 and 11--both sound-wise and the, I assume deliberate, echo of the lyrics (or reverse echo, I should say, given that that latter song came first).

Make sure your playlist is ordered correctly:

1. "Chinatown" by Wild Nothing

2. "Sour Milk / Sour Water" by Port O'Brien

3. "The Very Modern Dance" by Destroyer

4. "Rush Apart" by the Rural Alberta Advantage

5. "Northern Lights" by Bowerbirds

6. "Trees Are a Swayin'" by say hi

7. "O You with Your Skirt" by Royal City

8. "Country Caravan" by Blitzen Trapper

9. "Waltz #2 (XO)" by Elliott Smith

10. "Canada" by Themselves & WHY?

11. "You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son" by Wolf Parade

12. "Reckoner" by Radiohead

13. "Hat and Rabbit" by Page France

14. "I Can't Explain" by the Who

15. "Busted" by the Black Keys

16. "Nothing Ever Happened" by Deerhunter

17. "Woof Woof" by Dan Deacon

At the Temporary Age of 24: A Late-Winter Mix

[Download it here. Some songs may offend those with tender ears. Make sure the playlist is ordered by album, not by artist. See the bottom of this post for a full track list to ensure yours is correctly ordered.]

This mix sprang out of a recently renewed obsession with Destroyer and my dissatisfaction with my 2010 playlist. I should clarify that I am not dissatisfied with the contents of the playlist–there are a handful of songs I've since heard that I would include, but no major revisions. Instead, the playlist failed to satisfy my biannual desire to make and share a mix ordered more meaningfully than by artist name.

I'm vain enough to point out a few of the small details I like about this mix. The Walt Whitman poem about a vigil before burial leads into the opening line of the following track: "It was back amongst the living..." (aside: the track that closes with Whitman opens with a quote by Jefferson Davis, supposedly said or written to his wife after his inauguration). I like, too, the echo of sounds between the end of the Flaming Lips track and the beginning of the Walkmen one, and also how "Paper Lace" and "You're Not in Love" provide the hinge on which the mix swings from clear to somewhat more distorted, slightly more sinister.

2010 in Music: 2. A 2010 Playlist

Previously: Shows, An Aside About Community

The biggest difference between this list and those of the past couple years is that I did not arrange the tracks into mixes. I did not attempt to create an album-like order out of the chaos of individual tracks.

The second-biggest difference is that I have instituted a one song per artist per album rule. That’s why I am calling this a “2010 playlist” rather than a collection of my favorite songs or of the best songs of the year. Last year’s list was out of control, and I needed to cut it down. Notice that it’s per artist per album—meaning that multiple tracks from a compilation can be listed, and an album and EP from the artist can each contribute a song (you can call it the “I will have two tracks by Sufjan Stevens on here dammit” rule).

In keeping with past years they will not be ranked but simply ordered by artist name (first name, in the case of persons’ names, as you would see in your iTunes library).

The text accompanying the tracks varies. It may include memorable times listening to the song–particularly moments with friends–why I like it, why I picked it verses other tracks on the album, or thoughts about why I like this track but not the album.

You can download all of them in three parts (here, here, and here). Be forewarned: some of your mothers may not like some of the lyrics. The zip files are not arranged in any order whatsoever.

Please, you know, check out and buy the albums and go to the shows and be good patrons of the arts.

(In case you missed it above, the tracks are ordered alphabetically as you'd see them (aka as I saw them) in an iTunes playlist. The numbering below is not ranking.)