february 2003
If you've heard this month's mix, please leave a comment -- what you liked, what you didn't -- at the bottom of the page. Album links are to Amazon; if you like something, consider buying via that link so I get a cut and can keep the mix club going.
Here are the disc's liner notes in PDF (190k), if you want to see things in color.
Hey, you! Wanna help me get new music to put on future mixes? Check out this web site: Swappingtons. It's a place to give away the CDs, books, and DVDs you don't want any more and in turn get some new stuff you do want. I've gotten five CDs this way, one of which ended up contributing a track to this month's mix. It's all free, run by a good guy who's running it as a community service. So here's the favor I'm asking of all of you: Go sign up. And when you do, be sure to list me as the guy who referred you there (my username is jbenton). If you do, I get more CDs, and everybody wins. Merci beaucoup. On to the mix...
1. Car Radio / Spoon. From A Series of Sneaks (1998). I'm spending a lot of time in Austin nowadays for work, so we start with a selection from Austin's best band (and their most fun album). This is, I would argue, the best 89-second-long song ever.
2. Art Class (Song for Yayoi Kusama) / Superchunk. From Here's to Shutting Up (2001). You can't stop the Chunk! Hard to believe they've been around for 14 long years. Of the many indie rock heroes active circa 1990, Superchunk may have aged the best -- this album from 2001 is my favorite.
3. Summer Song / Elk City. From Hold Tight the Ropes (2002). True mix confession: I found this song at this Flak Magazine story that claimed to make a mix tape out of 2002's best tunes. They've got (legal!) MP3s of several of the songs on that site, so you broadband monkeys should get going. I don't like some of their choices (dude, the Mountain Goats blow), but hey, this is America, right?
4. Time Travel is Lonely / John Vanderslice. From Time Travel is Lonely (2001). John's the pop savant who used to lead MK Ultra. No fewer than 35 MP3s are available for download at his web site, including this very track and a different version of the song backed by Track 1's Spoon. (They toured together.) John also runs Tiny Telephone, one of the West Coast's indie recording studios of choice; their site has lots of great MP3s from bands like Death Cab, Beulah, and Deltron 3030.
5. Window Display / Enon. From High Society (2002). Enon's the new vehicle for John Schmersal, ex-Brainiac. I loved their first album, Believo!, and remember being disappointed when I picked this up last year. But repeated listens have made it a favorite. MP3s are always available at their site.
6. Snowsuit Sound / Sloan. From Twice Removed (1994). What an album -- probably my absolute most favoritest album in the whole world circa 1996-1998, and still brilliant, crystalline pop. People email me once in a while after seeing these track listings and ask how I got into early '90s Nova Scotian indie rock -- well, this album's how. (Not too long ago, it was named the best album in Canadian history. They've strayed from the model on all their (solid) albums since, and this is one case where I'd be happy if a band just kept making the same album over and over again. It's a shame label difficulties have left it out-of-print in the U.S. for years. You can get it for US$12 at their web site. This song also features the word "sizzleteen," which I hope you will find useful in everyday conversation.
7. Childbearing / David Poe. From The Late Album (2002). Back in my rock critic days, I gave a glowing review to his first album, which married claustrophobic, spare songs to some great lyrics. It took five years to put out this next album, which is much more produced, but has plenty of great moments on its own.
8. Almond Kisses / Spacehog. From The Chinese Album (1998). That's Michael Stipe on backing vocals. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for bands so obviously in love with David Bowie.
9. Craig the Survivor / Picasio. This would be a genius bootleg mix of Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" (that is, the Rocky theme) with Craig David's "Fill Me In." This may be my favorite song on the mix -- the way David's smoove-jam vocals move over the guitar rawk is a think of beauty.
10. The City / The Dismemberment Plan. From Emergency & I (1999). Or maybe this is my favorite song on the mix. You really should own this album, particularly if you're a college-educated twentysomething male having difficulties adjusting to adulthood while keeping in touch with your slightly bohemian tendencies -- the D-Plan is talking to you, brother. And they want you to dance.
11. Find Me, Ruben Olivares / Mark Kozelek. From Rock 'N' Roll Singer (2000). One of the few non-covers on this EP, which featured the Red House Painters front man covering one John Denver song and three AC/DC tunes, all in varying degrees of dirge. Beautiful stuff.
12. Staying Found / Velvet Crush. From Soft Sounds (2002). In their early '90s incarnation, Velvet Crush was a terrific Matthew Sweet-esque crunchy pop band, which just enough affinity for pedal steel to let every fourth song be labeled "alt-country." Well, it's been a long time, and this album sounds like a bunch of Bread covers. Not bad Bread covers, mind you -- Bread has their hallowed place in the music universe -- but Bread covers nonetheless. A good album to cry to.
13. Tantos Desejos (Nicola Conte mix) / Suba. From The Now Sound of Brazil (2003). If you want modern fusions of bossanova and electronica, look no further than Ziriguiboom Records, which seems to have cornered the market. (This album's a Ziri sampler.) Suba, sadly, died in an apartment fire back in 1999. This song, which will get your booty movin', features the first trombone solo in crabwalk.com history.
14. Clogger / 16 Horsepower. From Secret South (2000). Southern Gothic -- maybe even a little Southern Goth.
15. Little Chang, Big City / Seam. From The Pace is Glacial (1998). It's a real shame Seam is (apparently) no longer with us -- although since they tend to go about five years between albums, they might just be in hiding. Doubtful, though, since leader Sooyoung Park is now in a band called Ee. In their day, they were one of Chicago's finest, working the classic quiet-loud-quiet schtick to perfection. Park has one of rock's better whispers.
16. I've Been Wondering / The Minders. From Hooray for Tuesday (1998). Chirpy pop from the Elephant 6 collective (R.I.P). An album of great two-minute saccharine.
17. I Love the Unknown / Clem Snide. From Your Favorite Music (2000). Clem Snide's the kind of band you either love or hate, which makes them difficult for mix inclusion. Veteran traders will notice that, if they hate a track, it's usually in the 15-to-20 track range -- that's where the riskier stuff tends to go. Anyway, I think they get despair exactly right.
18. Lonely Spartanburg Flower Stall / The Young Fresh Fellows. From Because We Hate You (2001). Are they still allowed to call themselves Young Fresh Fellows if they've been around since 1982? Scott McCaughey writes the best choruses.
19. My Echo / Rival Schools. From United by Fate (2001). I didn't like the album as much as the hype prepared me to, but I was still able to pull this nugget from the mess. The third sub-two-minutes song this month.
20. El Climbe / Antfarm. From Live at the Blue Room (2000). I saw a review that called this song something that you'd expect to hear in a Super Nintendo game. Sort of a loose, jam-band-meets-surf-rock sound. Antfarm (not Alien Ant Farm, take note) was from Chico, California; the album is a [middling] compilation of live tracks from the Blue Room in that town. If this newspaper is to be believed, the band's on hiatus because leader Craig Mazur has taken a job in Antarctica, of all places. Not much of a "scene" there, I'm betting.
21. Across the Universe / Rufus Wainwright. From Poses (2002). Everybody hold hands.
