music for libraries -- september 27/08

"Music for Libraries" is perhaps the most obviously themed mixtape Cassette Shelf has featured so far. In my defense, I would like to state that, as an English honours student, I am swimming (alright, fine: drowning) in reading assignments, papers, and theory at the moment and the thought of coming up with a mixtape idea independent of everything that is filling my brain right now seemed difficult. You should probably understand that this mixtape is my brain. The songs generally all have some relation to literature or academics, whether through the obvious reference to books or the much more vague literary allusions. Plus "Almost Crimes", because it's a kick-ass song and I should probably mention that all of these books and words make me happy on a deep personal level. And this mix is actually pretty damn cohesive: it starts off on an ominous foot, full of brooding and modernistic angst, proceeds to an energetic little jig akin to how I feel walking through campus in the fall with an armful of textbooks, and finishes quietly and wistfully. So don't judge this mixtape by its gimmick-y tendencies, it's got a lot to offer.

original track list
01. "Bad Education" - Tilly and the Wall (Bottoms of Barrels);
02. "Cordelia" - The Tragically Hip (Yer Favourites);
03. "Sailing to Byzantium" - Liars (s/t);
04. "Bukowski" - Modest Mouse (Good News for People Who Love Bad News);
05. "Neon Bible" - The Arcade Fire (Neon Bible);
06. "Reading in Bed" - Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton (Knives Don't Have Your Back);
07. "Theologians" - Wilco (A Ghost is Born);
08. "Wrapped Up in Books" - Belle & Sebastian (Dear Catastrophe Waitress);
09. "Bookshop Casanova" - The Clientele (God Save the Clientele);
10. "Poetaster" - Miracle Fortress (Five Roses);
11. "My Favourite Book" - Stars (In Our Bedroom After the War);
12. "School Books" - Fields (Everything Last Winter);
13. "Academia" - Sia (Some People Have Real Problems);
14. "Jake's Classroom" - Terence Blanchard (The 25th Hour OST); *
15. "Sovay" - Andrew Bird (The Mysterious Production of Eggs);
16. "Pressed in a Book" - The Shins (Oh, Inverted World!);
17. "Almost Crimes" - Broken Social Scene (You Forgot It in People);
18. "The Book I Write" - Spoon (Stranger than Fiction OST);
19. "The Sun Also Sets" - Ryan Adams (Easy Tiger);
20. "Tragedy" - Brandi Carlile (s/t);
21. "Family Happiness" - The Mountain Goats (The Coroner's Gambit);
22. "Oedipus" - Regina Spektor" (Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories);
23. "Virginia Woolf" - Indigo Girls (Rites of Passage);
24. "A Place Called Home" - Kim Richey (Rise);
25. "The Vivian Girls Are Visited In the Night by Saint Dargarius and his Squadron of Benevolent Butterflies" - Sufjan Stevens (The Avalanche);
26. "Hows About Tellin A Story" - Devendra Banhart (Cripple Crow);
27. "The Professor & La Fille Danse" - Damien Rice (B-sides);
28. "At Last the Secret Is Out" - Carla Bruni (No Promises);
29. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" - Sufjan Stevens (Seven Swans);
30. "Sylvia Plath" - Ryan Adams (Gold).

Habits of the Indigenous Music Snob: Part I

I'd like to introduce a new feature on this blog, one that will be deliberately and good-naturedly self-deprecating. Because, really, Torrey and I are aware that music snobs have a bad reputation. We are also aware that this bad reputation comes from the fact that we are, at times, Super Pretentious. So Habits of the Indigenous Music Snob will poke fun at various aspects of music snobbery, while also being relatively true observations.

Part 1: Relationships

Music snobs are not at heart solitary creatures, content merely with a surrounding cave of well-aged vinyl records and a 160 GB iPod (now discontinued). No - they too long for the emotions of love, tenderness, and intimacy, just as their favorite artists and bands have taught them to. (Side note: What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?) And music snobs are not doomed to live only with their rare Smiths singles: relationships are attainable for them, but with a few basic rules. And the most cardinal of these rules is the following:

Music snobs cannot date other music snobs. It just doesn't work, people.

I know what you're thinking. "But Kathryn, my boyfriend/girlfriend really loves music!" "But Kathryn, your best friend is Torrey and he's a music snob!" Yes. I know. I'm still right. Here's why:

1. There is a large, vast difference between a music snob and an individual who loves music. Someone who loves music will buy CDs, listen to the radio, find new music online, and in general enjoy the addition of music to their daily life. They also have a ~47% chance of having good taste. But, unlike a music snob, they are not competitive about music. They do not spend time agonizing over whether a certain band has indie cred or not. They do not feel actual shame over not particularly liking a band that they know, as music snobs, they should like. Their response to being complimented on their musical taste is "Thanks! Glad you like it!" The music snob's response is always "I know."

2. Music snobs can absolutely be best friends with other music snobs. They can be casual friends, dog-walkers, collaborators, co-workers, fuckbuddies. They absolutely never ever ever can be romantically involved. This is because music snobs are competitive. They have to have the best music collection ever. And this is okay for casual friends, even best friends, because friendship is not a union. You do not actively become part of a couple in friendship. You are a duo, not a couple. A duo implies equal amounts of impressive talent, brought together in a temporary social situation. A couple is a fixed combination. And a music snob always wants to dominate; the music snob is inherently territorial in nature. Two music snobs dating would be an incessant rigmarole of figurative urination.

I realize this may sound overly harsh. But I really believe it's true. You should also note that the music snob will always SAY that he or she will only date another music snob. The music snob states ridiculously high standards for any potential boyfriend/girlfriend in terms of musical taste, but inevitably does not end up with anyone like this. Even Torrey and I's Bible, High Fidelity, proves this point. Laura is not a music snob. She likes good music and appreciates the art of music, but is not a music snob. This is because Rob would never, ever be able to date a music snob. Can you imagine two individuals prone to giving third-wall-dissolving narratives to the camera in the same relationship? No! It could never work! The music snob needs a counterpoint, a foil to their intense musical pretentiousness, someone who has a healthy or even non-existent attitude towards music.

Case in point: my first relationship began with my then-boyfriend making me mix-tapes that contained Elvis, "Unchained Melody", and other various oldie-but-goodie songs that had clearly come from his parents' influence. Another mixtape was comprised completely of Scrubs soundtrack songs. But shortly after he began listening to Devendra Banhart and telling me that I really underappreciated The Flaming Lips, the relationship ended. Coincidence? Or staggering confirmation of my scientific theory?

I say, staggering confirmation. Feel free to offer your own opinions. But I will argue that you are wrong.

Songs That Remind You of Home

I recently had the privilege of of seeing Guy Madden's film "My Winnipeg", a semi-fictional, pseudo-documentary about his hometown. Madden's film, about the sleep walking capital of the world, inspired me to create this mix.

Within this mix are a collection of songs with a very distinct time or place in mind. All of them are very specific, and yet, in a way where the specificity reminds us of our own hometowns, or childhoods, or families.

Some of the songs which immediately came to mind while I was crafting this list are by Canadian artists, and others were very much a part of my own childhood. I intend for parts of this mix to be specific to me, and hopefully the mix finds a specificity that extends to where you come from. This mix is an ode to the gritty, the dirty, the funny, and the quaint nature of wherever you come from.

original track list
01. One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces - Ben Folds Five (Whatever and ever Amen)
02. The Old Apartment - Barenaked Ladies (Greatest Hits)
03. Parklife - Blur (The Best of...)
04. The Way We Get By - Spoon (Kill the Moonlight)
05. Nights of the Living Dead - Tilly and the Wall (Wild LIke Children)
06. Waiting for the 7.18 - Bloc Party (A Weekend in the City)
07. Two Hearts - Danny Michel (Tales from the Invisible Man)*
08. Hangover Days - Jason Collett (Idols of Exile)
09. LDN - Lily Allen (Alright, Still)
10. The Frug - Rilo Kiley (The Initial Friend)
11. Dance Music - The Mountain Goats (The Sunset Tree)
12. Reunion - Stars (Set Yourself on Fire)
13. 1979 - The Smashing Pumpkins (Rotten Apples)
14. In the Garage - Weezer (Weezer)
15. Yellow Brick Road - Raine Maida (The Hunter's Lullabye)*
16. Are You Lookin' at Me? - Colin Hay (Are You Lookin' at Me?)
17. Blinded by the Lights - The Streets (A Grand Don't Come for Free)
18. One Great City - The Weakerthans (Reconstruction Site)
19. You Remind me of Home - Ben Gibbard and Andrew Kinney (Home vol. 5)
20. The Valley Town - Elliot Brood (Mountain Meadows)
21. Wheat Kings - The Tragically Hip (Yer Favourites)
22. Sullivan Street - Counting Crows (August and Everything After)
23. Orange Sky - Alexi Murdoch (Time Without Consequence)
24. Sodom, South Georgia - Iron and Wine (Our Endless Numbered Days)
25. Wild Pack of Family Dogs - Modest Mouse (The Moon and Antartica)
26. Los Angeles, I'm Yours - The Decembersists (Billy Liar EP)
27. Riot Van - Arctic Monkeys (Whatever People Say I Am, Thats What I'm Not)
28. The City is a Drag - Hawksley Workman (Los Manlicious)
29. Southtown Girls - The Hold Steady (Boys and Girls in America)

Note: On further inspection of this mix, I have become unhappy with it. I feel that it got a little sloppy, and for this, I apologize. My alterations, for anyone playing at home, are to remove the following:

01. One Angry Dwarf and 200 Faces
05. Nights of the Living Dead
08. Hangover Days
10. The Frug
15. Yellow Brick Road

The reasoning behind this removal is that upon further examination, I feel these songs characterize more the act or experience of growing up and of youth, than of actual home or homelife. My intention was for the songs to convey a distinct time or place and the feeling associated with them, and the removed songs do not do that as strongly as i wished. This is not a commentary on the quality of the songs, however. I love them all, they just did not fit... My bad...

Minor Radio Fame... Kind of...

So my local alternative radio station (which is in Edmonton) has a program every week called "Hey Ma! I'm on SONiC". I am lucky enough to be featured on it tonight, so anyone who happens to see this before 10:00 pm Mountain Time can tune into the live feed, and hear me cohosting an hour show, with my selection of music.

The site is www.radiosonic.fm.

Beastie Boys - Sabotage
Broken Social Scene - 7/4 Shoreline
The Clash - Train In Vain
The Cure - Close To Me
The Fratellis - Chelsea Dagger
The Kooks - Always Where I Need To Be
M.I.A. - Paper Planes
Modest Mouse - Float On
The Pixies - Where Is My Mind
The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
Silversun Pickups - Lazy Eye
Hawksley Workman - Smoke Baby (acoustic)

Thanks, friends.

goodbye songs -- september 11/08

Due to inexplicable reasons that have since become even more mysterious to me, I chose to go to university literally at the other end of Canada. I'm being facetious - there were, and are, decent and understandable reasons, not the least of which was that particular and desperate need to escape various phantoms and start over. What one doesn't realize when one makes this decision, however, is the peculiar sort of limbo this permanent transit creates. I am not really ever at home. I am usually always saying goodbye. When I am here at school I miss my home province in the most essential ways: I miss its landscape, its weather, its winds and intangible vagrancies. During the summer, I miss the detachment of school from the scattered jetsam that I have accumulated. This mixtape is a collection of these various goodbyes and longings, I have listened to these songs in airplanes.

Yeah, I got all personal there, how un-snobby. Also, apparently Mixwit hates me today and has decided to have none of my favorite songs on this mix. Fine. I bite my thumb at you, Mixwit. Ask me for the mix if you want it, yada yada.

original track list
01. "Grow Up and Blow Away" - Metric (Grow Up and Blow Away);
02. "405" - Death Cab for Cutie (We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes);
03. "Parachutes (Funeral Song)" - Mates of State (Team Boo);
04. "Coughing Colors" - Tilly and the Wall (Bottoms of Barrels); *
05. "The Wooden Sky" - The Wooden Sky (When Lost at Sea);
06. "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" - Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova (I'm Not There OST);
07. "Pictures of Success" - Rilo Kiley (Takeoffs & Landings);
08. "Kelly Brown" - The Earlies (Skins OST); *
09. "NYC" - Interpol (Turn on the Bright Lights);
10. "Cadillac Dust" - Elliott Brood (Tiny Type);
11. "Leaving Home" - The Mountain Goats (Ghana); *
12. "Look into the Air" - Explosions in the Air (How Strange, Innocence);
13. "You've Gone Away Enough" - Mirah (C'mon Miracle);
14. "Moongirl" - stellastarr* (s/t); *
15. "High Speed" - Coldplay (Parachutes);
16. "Muzzle of Bees" - Wilco (A Ghost Is Born);
17. "The Great Escape" - Patrick Watson (Close to Paradise);
18. "At the Hop" - Devendra Banhart (Nino Rojo);
19. "Oh My Sweet Carolina" - Ryan Adams (Heartbreaker);
20. "A Tender History in Rust" - Do Make Say Think (You, You're a History in Rust);
21. "Devil Town" - Tony Lucca (Friday Night Lights OST).

Top 5 Bands that Changed My Musical Landscape

YES, I am finally updating. In my defence: I flew to the other end of the country, saw my boyfriend for the first time in two months, moved into residence, and started a new year of university. Things, they have been a-happening. But finally, a Top 5:

Let me state first: this is not a "Favorite Artists" Top 5, nor is it meant to attest that these artists are the best of my music collection. Instead, this Top 5 lists artists that were, due to a flurry of converging circumstances, completely revelatory to my taste and experience in music. These are the artists that were each the first to give me something in music I had not expected before, and which I consequently would demand from any music to follow. This is almost like a list describing the evolution of my musical taste, but that sounds really daunting, because how can I really explain my tendency towards depressing, low-key music other than typical teenage angst? So instead: a basic tutorial in the topography of my musical landscape, listed chronologically.

Top 5 Artists that Changed My Musical Landscape

Tori Amos

I heard the Tori Amos song below one day by pure chance on the radio. Before this song, I was the epitome of horrible pre-adolescent musical taste. My exposure to Tori Amos introduced me to the idea that songs like "Winter" could have, nay, should have, literary value. And Amos has that in spades, though some may find her overwrought; she uses symbolism and metaphors as easily as breathing and she swims in that piano of hers. She was the first to illustrate to me what a musical artist was, this crazy violent quaint faerie with clouds and clouds of red hair and white skin. Thus, sentimental value.



The Shins

I realize how cliche it is to be influenced by Zach Braff's iTunes, okay. But - suck it. I refuse to join in the massive hate hard-on people have against Garden State nowadays. I saw that movie three times in four days, and unabashedly thrilled to the sound of "New Slang" through Natalie Portman's headphones. If this makes me uncool, then so be it. But this song came to epitomize in its quiet way the vast and subtle world of music that existed beneath radio and Top 40 and all that. I also realized you had to work to get at it. A music snob was subsequently born.



Interpol

I realize that I don't show a large tendency towards the rockier side of indie music, but what little I do possess comes as a result of this band. Paul Banks is perhaps one of the most strangely, intimately verbose lyricists in music right now, I think; he writes these rambling, eccentric, compelling love songs that speak both unexpectedly and unconventionally to one's heart. Love is not to him a melancholy force but one of constant joy and motion even in pain. This is beside the point. The insistent pounding ache of "Obstacle 1" and the low drone of Banks' voice showed me that a killer bass line didn't mean a song wouldn't knock me out and hang me up to dry. "I wish I could eat the salt off of your lost faded lips" - poetry.



Stars

Just from "Your Ex-Lover is Dead" (below) alone, you can sense that Stars harnesses their natural tendency for melodrama into a dual narrative both fantastical and communal. I have always loved Stars, but they did not truly change my musical landscape until I saw them live; that concert remains the best I have seen to this day. It would be easy for any sense of real emotion to become lost in the soaring violins and the dramatic absolutes of Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan's personas, but instead they communicate crystalline moments as though nostalgic in prescience.



The Mountain Goats

I went through a period of time after hearing the Mountain Goats for the first time during which I did not listen to anything else. No, really. Since the Mountain Goats, I can say honestly that I no longer hunt for music the same way I once did. I call myself a Darniellead; this band is honestly sort of my religion. John Darnielle is a poet, kids. Fuck, he's a novelist. He has characters who span songs and albums and decades of music: the Alphas, the scarred, bitter, alcoholic embodiments of mutually assured destruction of the heart, and they star in this song, "No Children", the very first song I ever heard of theirs through complete and utter fortuitous chance (my penpal wrote the lyrics on the back of an envelope). He can create in a few well-placed words a description of the place and setting that establishes the tone and meaning of the song. Most literature is not this good, okay. And Darnielle's voice can range from a prolonged grating growl of frustration and hopelessness to a wistful, plaintive elegy. I cannot say enough about the Mountain Goats. They have ruined all other music for me.