july 2002
If you're here, you must have a copy of my July mix. Please leave your comment on the mix -- 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 keep the mix club going.
This month's theme, following up on last month: songs by artists in the G-P section of my CD collection who hadn't appeared on my previous mixes. (Last month was A-F. Anyone want to guess next month's theme?
New feature! The insert card for this month's mix is available in PDF format (794k).
1. Happy Sad / Pizzicato Five. On The Sound of Music (1996). What better way to start a mix than with those mid-'90s Japanese darlings, the Pizzicato Five? They seem to have dropped off the hipster map of late -- maybe not such a bad thing -- but they were occasionally capable of nifty jaunts like this one.
2. The Brides Have Hit Glass / Guided By Voices. On Isolation Drills (2001). Unlike most critics, I really dug Guided By Voices' push for mainstream success (on Do the Collapse and Isolation Drills, the terrific disc this is from). Bee Thousand-era GBV left me a little cold; it seemed like Bob Pollard was too drunk to finish writing his songs. More production polish meant more attention to craft, in my opinion. (By-now-well-known Unusual Fact about Pollard, GBV auteur and writer of songs like "Tractor Rape Chain": Until recently, he was a fourth-grade teacher. Scary.)
3. Lucy Doesn't Love You / Ivy. On Long Distance (2001). Ivy's new disc is supposed to be quite good; haven't heard it yet. The band's secret weapon is bassist Adam Schlesinger, best known for his work co-leading uberpoppers Fountains of Wayne.
4. Umi Says / Mos Def. On Black on Both Sides (1999). Mighty Mos Def, half of Black Star, is one of my very favorite rappers, and this album's terrific all the way through. This is the jazziest track; you probably heard it as the backing music to a Michael Jordan Nike commercial a year or so ago.
5. A Swallow on My Neck / Morrissey. On My Early Burglary Years (1998). This was a B-side from 1995. My Early Burglary Years is a surprisingly good compilations of B-sides and rarities, in some ways more consistent than Moz's regular records. I certainly find myself going back to it more than Bona Drag, Maladjusted, or Your Arsenal. (I almost chose track 4, "Nobody Loves Us," instead, since it's such a great soaring tune and, as its title suggests, a nice summation of all the self-loathing Morrissey represents.) On my weblog not long ago, I had a little discussion of an odd (to me) trend in Morrissey's fan base.
6. The Body Says No / The New Pornographers. On Mass Romantic (2000). They take their name from the 1980s Helms Congressional hearings on the evils of rock music (in which rock was called "the new pornography"). An indie Canadian supergroup, with vocalist Neko Case sitting in (on backing vocals here). You can't listen to this album in the car and not sing along.
7. In Love With a View / Mojave 3. On Excuses for Travellers (2000). This is a great album -- impossibly sad country music, sung with a British sense of reserve. Singer Neil Halstead just put out a solo disc that's gotten good reviews.
8. Fear of Falling / Golden Smog. On Weird Tales (1998). Speaking of supergroups, Golden Smog assembles all sorts of alt-country royalty (Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, the guys from the Jayhawks, etc.). To these ears, Weird Tales is actually a more accomplished album than anything the band's members have produced in their main bands. The Jayhawks' stuff is strongest; the disc's final track "Jennifer Save Me" prefigures the noise experiments Tweedy brought to Wilco's lauded Yankee Hotel Foxtrot -- it makes me want to cry whenever I hear it.
9. The Outdoor Type / The Lemonheads. On Car Button Cloth (1996). The Lemonheads took a lot of crap during their career, mainly because front man Evan Dando was really good looking and folks thought they achieved fame and fortune on that basis alone. That omits a couple of key points, though: (a) they never actually achieved any fame or fortune, save that one early 1990s moment when their "Mrs. Robinson" cover was on radio every 20 minutes, and (b) Dando's actually a good songwriter. This is a slight little ditty, but the rest of the album has some real winners. (This was their last disc before breaking up; Dando's doing some solo stuff now.)
10. Scent of Lime / The Long Winters. On The Worst You Can Do Is Harm (2002). The Long Winters are part of the Barsuk label family, a bunch of Pacific Northwest indie folks. (Death Cab for Cutie are the most prominent among them. CDMOM side note: there was a time about three months ago when just about one of every three mixes I'd get in the mail had a Death Cab track on it. I love the guys, but it was a little bit of overkill. I guess their moment has passed.) Anyway, the Long Winters disc is up and down, but it's got a couple great tracks (this and the rollicking Car Parts, mostly).
11. This Time / Los Lobos. On This Time (1999). They just keep on cranking out good stuff. Makes me think of riding in a 1962 Chevy through rural Arizona, windows down with the AM blaring. Thank heavens they didn't rest on their "La Bamba" laurels.
12. Mr. Whisper / Pee Shy. On Don't Get Too Comfortable (1998). Pee Shy was a Tampa band that never really had a chance, although their disc is very pleasant in a sort of toned-down-Liz-Phair way. (With what Liz Phair's been crapping out the last few years, perhaps that should be "in a sort of today's-Liz-Phair way.") Three-quarters of the band's now in a New York act called Three Wheeler.
13. Jenny and the Ess-Dog / Stephen Malkmus. On Stephen Malkmus (2001). Again, I differ from the conventional critical opinion that Pavement was best in its earliest, rawer days. (See track 2, above.) As they learned how to play their instruments and hired real producers, they got better, not worse -- Terror Twilight, their finale, is probably my favorite Pavement disc. The solo album from ex-Pavement head Malkmus continues the trend. (I wanted to put my favorite song from the album, Pink India, on here, but it's too damned long.)
14. The Hymn for the Cigarettes / Hefner. On Fidelity Wars (1999). Hefner's a so-so British band, but this song rocks at a nice pace.
15. Love Career / New Wet Kojak. On Do Things (2000). I love New Wet Kojak. They're a side project for half of Girls Against Boys, and as GVSB becomes more and more of an unreconstructed metal band (although a good one!), I appreciate their jazzier, funkier NWK side even more. A fun, moody album.
16. Same Day / J. Mascis and the Fog. On More Light (2000). J Mascis, of course, was the majordomo behind Dinosaur Jr. Don't confuse him with Jawbox/Burning Airlines frontman J Robbins, or my standard login ID, jbenton. Sounds like he's having fun, holed up in his western Massachusetts studio, smoking lots of pot.
17. Punched a Friend / The Holy Cows. On Blueberrie (1997). They're from the Ann Arbor area; no idea if they're still around. I think the label, Big Pop, folded some time ago. Sounds like a long lost Replacements track to me.
18. Great Expectations / Jurassic 5. On Quality Control (2000). Love these guys; harmonies in rap are an underutilized weapon.
19. Everyone is My Friend / Owls. On Owls (2001). Owls is made up of everyone from emo heroes Cap'n Jazz except for the old lead singer, Davey von Bohlen (who's now in the Promise Ring). Like Bedhead from last month's mix, everytime I try to introduce someone to Owls, they end up running screaming from the room. I think they're brilliant musicians (the guitar work on this album is amazing), and the off-key vocals seem almost charming.
20. Je T'aime...Moi Non Plus / Serge Gainsbourg. On Comic Strip (1997). That's Jane Birkin singing the female parts. One of the great fake orgasms of all of recorded music. Serge has to be the ugliest rock star in history (assuming one includes French "rock stars" in the rock star pantheon); one wonders how he kept scoring with babes like Birkin and Brigitte Bardot. On this side of the Atlantic, Serge is probably best known for telling Whitney Houston "I want to fuck you" on a French talk show. If he wasn't already dead, Bobby Brown would probably have him killed.
