1. What a Drag! - The Kim Band
2. Hey Sailor - The Detroit Cobras
3. Bullet - Frank Black & The Catholics
4. The Other Man - Sloan
5. Everything Hits At Once - Spoon
6. Know Your Onion! - The Shins
7. Lowdown - My Morning Jacket
8. Jacksonville Skyline - Whiskeytown
9. Good Souls - Starsailor
10. Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk - Rufus Wainwright
11. I Might Be Wrong - Radiohead
12. Dead Leaves & the Dirty Ground - The White Stripes
13. Glad Girls - Guided By Voices
14. Short Skirt/Long Jacket - Cake
15. Handcuffed to a Fence in Mississippi - Jim White
16. Boo - Macy Gray
17. In the Waiting Line - Zero 7
18. Digital Love - Daft Punk
19. Hip Hop Thighs #17 - Ike Reilly
20. New York, New York - Ryan Adams
21. Life on a Chain - Pete Yorn
22. Affection - Lost Boys
23. It's Raining (4AM) - The Bicycle Thief
24. Weekend Monster - Diamond Dogs
25. Shut Up and Get On the Plane - Drive By Truckers
1. ‘What a Drag!’ from Girology by the Kim Band. This album was recommended to me by a good friend of mine who was not a fan of the same kind of music I was (“I like angry white guy music, man”). I remember playing him The New Pornographer’s Mass Romantic and he was just horrified I liked it and recommended I check out the Kim Band if I wanted to continue to listen to crap. I did and still do. Thanks Ian!
2. The Detroit Cobras ‘Hey Sailor’ from Life, Love & Leaving is just great rock & roll. Either you like this kind of thing or you don’t.
3. I used to be one of those people who was adamant that Frank Black’s solo career, despite being tremendously longer and richer than that of his former (and current, I guess) band, Pixies, was still inferior. As such I used to give his solo albums only a cursory listen and then move on, until I actually listened to the plaintive arguments of some who strongly argued otherwise. Glad I listened finally. ‘Bullet’, one of many awesome songs from Frank Black and the Catholics’s Dog in Sand.
4. Sloan’s ‘The Other Man’ from Pretty Together is like an anthem for the cuckolder. There are probably hundreds of songs written by the cuckolded male bemoaning his cheating wife or girlfriend, but you don’t get many songs written from the other man's perspective. And here he expresses this behaviour honestly and without explanation or justification: ‘I know he’s a standup guy, but that’s none of my concern’. Okay pally, don’t get killed.
5. Spoon fascinates me. They play deceptively simple music that initially seems hardly worthy of their (relative) fame within the indie music community. There are other bands who do this kind of thing yet are not as fawned over by critics and fans. So what gives? I’m still trying to figure it out actually because it is deceptively simple, but there’s something about it that draws you back when one might like to dismiss it. There’s a spare quality they have, kind of an anti-Broken Social Scene, where they leave out more than they put into a song and that somehow makes it more satisfying overall. It’s also decidedly unemotional, in my opinion. They observe and report. ‘Everything Hits At Once’ from Girls Can Tell is a great tune and I count them among the bands that have become progressively more interesting over the past decade. Although I still find them a bit baffling, I will still listen.
6. Who would have ever thought that some annoying vegan actress could help make such an overwhelmingly bland band like The Shins kind of a Big Deal? This certainly doesn’t sound like life-changing music, but if one was to imagine such a thing, how a song or band could Change a Life, I believe the power of the universe would dictate that it should be HUGE, much like a cataclysmic natural event, a hurricane, a tornado, an earthquake take your pick. This isn’t huge music, but not without some small charms, kind of like a piece of chocolate. Not great chocolate either, a Hershey’s Kiss maybe because the songs are short. From Oh Inverted World, 'Know Your Onion!'.
7. I just flat out love My Morning Jacket. One of my favourite artists from this decade and right at the top of bands I need to see in a live setting. 'Lowdown' from At Dawn is a lovely tune. It isn’t one of my favourite records from their oeuvre, if only because it’s a significant undertaking to sit and take in during a single sitting. It’s a Big Album and in my mind can at least gracefully enter that sphere of possibility “Life Changing”. ‘Lowdown’ is a wonderful song. “Chancin', glancin', sho nuff mood for romancin'”.
8. Listening to Whiskeytown’s Pneumonia and some of Ryan Adams’ early solo songs, you sometimes think ‘maybe he is as good as he thinks is’. Which isn't possible, but when you hear songs like ‘Jacksonville Skyline’, you can almost believe him.
9. There’s no explanation why I should still be listening to Starsailor’s Love is Here in 2009. Britpop albums usually have an expiration date that’s fairly soon after their release. I can only assume it’s something in the air over there, which spoils very quickly on this continent. (notable exceptions being Gay Dad’s Leisure Noise and the first two Oasis records). I guess the reason I’m still listening is because it really isn’t ‘Britpop’ but more of a straight English band playing kind of a jazzy and introspective pop music a la Van Morrison (disclaimer: I am not suggesting Starsailor are cut from the same cloth as Van Morrison). ‘Good Souls’, one of many great songs on this album.
10. I actually used to consume Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk regularly at work as they really were a few of my cravings. Nothing like a smoke and some milk. Rufus Wainwright has a knack for summing up those things we should probably avoid. From Poses.
11. Against all better judgement I put Radiohead's 'I Might Be Wrong' on here. Maybe because it feels like it should be on Kid A and not Amnesiac. I gave that record more than a few chances over the last near decade. I don't quite despise it, but there's more than a few occasions where I've grabbed the remote and said "why the fuck am I listening to this bullshit" and then . It doesn't happen during 'I Might Be Wrong'.
12. I remember hearing about them but for the longest time I just never got the opportunity to hear them (usenet did not provide in this case). Even when 'Fell in Love with A Girl' got popular and then backlashed enough that people would bitch about the omnipresence of the song, I still didn't know what the deal was about this band. I don't think 'Fell in Love with a Girl' is even an album highlight, it was between 'Hotel Yorba' or 'Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground', still one of my favourites from this band. Over the decade, I've pretty much decided that whatever Jack White does, I will give it a shot.
13. I think I have three albums by Guided By Voices and I'm not sure why. The only song I ever really want to hear from them is 'Glad Girls' from Isolation Drills. Good luck on emptying your brain after hearing it.
14. 'Short Skirt/Long Jacket' from Cake's Comfort Eagle. I will be honest and say that I am not one who enjoys dancing but this damn song always makes me want to get up and shake dat azz.
15. I heard 'Handcuffed to a Fence in Mississippi' by Jim White on a mix a few years ago. I checked out his album No Such Place. I highly recommend it for some alternative take on alternative country. Great lyrics with some sly beats courtesy of Morcheeba, which is kind of precedes Steve Earle's experiment with that on Washington Square Serenade by quite a few years.
16. I really thought Macy Gray had some bad luck with her album The Id. It was an excellent funk-soul album that had the horrendous luck to have a release date of 09/11/01. No one was really into this album that opened with 'Relating to a Psychopath', which was a shame. It was the soundtrack in the car for quite a while. This is 'Boo'. Highly recommended.
17. 'In the Waiting Line' from Zero 7's Simple Things is just one of many songs on that album that could be lifted and placed on Air's Moon Safari. It's not even subtle, as this song is basically 'All I Need', but fortunately it's all good if you don't care about those things and just love hearing 'All I Need' pt 2. Nice and chill.
18. 'Digital Love' from Daft Punk's Discovery is the odd man out here. Actually track 17 AND 18 are hard to squeeze in but anyway that's how it goes. I have an overwhelming need to derail a mix about 3/4 through. This is it. It also makes an horrible segue to...
19. Ike Reilly's 'Hip Hop Thighs #17. ' A 'play it really, really loud' kind of song, begging to be drunkenly shouted at about 11:21pm once the inhibitions are lowered to dangerous levels and anything is possible. From Salesmen & Racists, an album I somehow resisted for too long and now grab at it for a pick me up very frequently.
20. Gold is a fairly decent Ryan Adams album. Typically when I get a jones to hear him, it's this or Cold Roses I grab for. I like the idea that he's ballsy enough to cut two double albums over the course of 5 years even though overextends a bit too much and I usually don't make it through from start to finish. I still think it's pretty crazy that Ryan Adams filmed the video for 'New York, New York' in front of the New York skyline four days before Sept. 11. He may in fact be the prophet we've always feared. Kind of like Rasputin but with worse hair.
21. Ah, Pete Yorn if only you could crank out more like 'Life on a Chain' from the perfectly titled 'musicforthemorningafter', which often does hit the mark. It had a couple of great songs on it, but he's someone I wanted to like more than I ever actually did.
22. This might be one of the great songs ever. I'm serious. 'Affection' by Lost Boys, appearing on the Sopranos soundtrack Peppers and Eggs: Music from the HBO Series, and previously appeared on the unreleased album Nobody Loves and Leaves Alive. What blew me away was discovering the band is fronted by none other than Silvio Dante aka Little Steven Van Zandt. Apparently while off from the E-Street Band, he put together a garage band. I think we all need to see this album released based on the insane greatness of 'Affection'. Even the scene where it was featured in the show was fantastic. Tony Soprano is relaxing post-coitus with his current paramour Gloria Trillo. 'Affection' is playing on the radio in the background. She sensually dances to the song and before she turns it up and she asks Tony:
'You like this song?'
'It's all right.'
'I... fucking...love this song'
23. Speaking of true love, this song is also pretty much tops. It’s Rainin’ (4AM) by The Bicycle Thief. This was originally a '99 release but I have the '01 version so on the mix it must appear. This is an incredible song. First time I heard this was on a mix appropriately titled 'Slowcore Monger'. I'm not going to explain what that means.
24. Diamond Dogs are a Swedish band who play rock & roll like it never progressed past the early 70s. So you know, it's really, really great. 'Weekend Monster' from As Your Green Turns Brown is typically awesome, one of those play it loud songs that sound even better when you're getting your load on.
25. Of the 'new' bands I've come to love over the '00s, outside of My Morning Jacket, I generally try to recommend the Drive By Truckers to everyone who asks me about what new music I listen to. Of course I take into account whether they're up for a little adventure. It's not quantitatively challenging in terms of actual music, but overall it's not going to be everyone's particular brand lyrically, especially if you're not up for a heavy, heavy Southern vibe, e.g. a nearly 8 min spoken word piece on three Alabama icons on their genius double album Southern Rock Opera. I thought about putting that song smack dab in the middle of the mix, but this had to close out with 'Shut Up and Get on the Plane', 3:39 of goddamn great rock & roll.
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