The Look Back

For some, the Christmas season is marked by getting a Christmas tree, going to the mall or just the smell of Christmas cookies in the oven.  For the hipster in your life Christmas is defined by the Pitchfork Top 100 Singles and Top 50 Albums list being released.  I was able to track down a nice person who went to the trouble of zipping all 100 of the tracks together and posting it online.  For this weeks mix I went through and grabbed my top five favorite songs which I had previously never heard (more than once) previously.  (With the exception of the Kevin Drew track I hadn’t heard any of the tracks before the list came out.) Enjoy these on your drives here there and everywhere this Christmas week. 

(Sorry, no reviews on these guys. Go to Pitchfork)

Cassie – Is It You?

Kevin Drew – Backed Out on the…

The Twilight Sad – Cold Days from the Birdhouse

Sally Shapiro – He Keeps Me Alive

Gui Boratto – Beautiful Life

Marty Robbins – El Paso

I always seem to get this song mixed up with “Ghost Riders in the Sky”.  I think both were/are sitting atop my Dad’s Top Songs of All Time list.  (Ok, so he doesn’t really have a blog that lists this but I know him pretty well.) This song definitely has that old west/old Mexico feel to it. 

Sufjan Stevens – Come On! Let’s Boogey to the Elf Dance!

Santa Claus is coming to town!  I love this song to no end because it has that classic feel to it with basically every odd and end relating to Christmas in it from both a secular and Christian perspective.  If you need another dose of Sufjan Stevens this year you can go download his new rendition of We Wish You a Merry Christmas which I find horrible.  There is still hope that Alec Duffy will post his new Sufjan gift song and that it is something as great as the Elf Dance.   

One work week left before my Christmas break. It will be a much deserved week away from the office and not thinking about the things that have started to depress me more and more. More important that even that will be my 4^th annual Crappy Christmas Cartoon Festival tomorrow night, December 15^th. I look forward to this party more than any other party I throw throughout the year. This year there will even be snow in Orange County.

PS. Don’t forget to check out my amazing Top 40 of 2007 list.

Black Lips – Stranger

This is the version from their “Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo” live album from earlier this year. Recorded in Mexico of all places by a group from Atlanta. I keep hearing a lot about the live experience and this song really seems to make that praise more apparent than ever. The banter at the end is also an added bonus and one of the only reasons I ever bother to listen to a live album. It’s nice to also see a “live” album that was put out by a band that wasn’t just trying to put out one fluff record to appease their record label and squeeze some extra cash out of the general public.

Battles – Leyendecker

Battles really snuck up on me to the point that I listen to their album “Mirrored” once a week. I think seeing all the live clips of these guys doing the festival circuit this year gave me an even greater appreciation for what they are doing. I thought that most of the sounds you hear on the album were all controlled by a laptop and ProTooled to hell. In actuality they use very few computer effects and most everything you hear is being done through a keyboard and various guitar pedals. Pretty cool how that works.

Beach House – Gila

This is a new one that has taken the blog world by storm this week, similar to “Foam Hands” last week. I missed seeing them live last year with Valerie but I heard it was a good show. Not exactly the high energy experience you may be thinking but it is a good show. This doesn’t deviate very far from the album they released last year but that again isn’t a bad thing.

Patsy Cline – I Fall to Pieces

I am back to the old school country music. One of the standards from Patsy Cline from 1960’s. I think she has one of the more unique voices in Country music and something that most everyone can distinguish even if they aren’t a fan. A typical cry me a river song for the era I think can still be a lively little song for a Friday afternoon.

Okkervil River – Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas

This is a gorgeous song by my favorite artist of 2007. Originally released on the “Don’t Fall in Love With Everyone You Meet” EP a while back the band just released a live version this week on their website as well as a few other cover songs. A very nice accompaniment to “The Stage Names.” This song really brings up a lot of Christmas feelings I get from time to time. That longing for the old times to come back even though if you think about it more you realize they weren’t anything THAT special. I constantly pull up the most mundane images from my childhood Christmas such as the back porch at my grandparent’s house being lined with rain boots. Simple, “stupid”, but for some reason that is a happy thought. Even as I remember back to a couple Christmases past and thinking that they weren’t the same and that it wasn’t as special I now look back on those Christmases and think about how great they were. I need to think more about the present than the past in this respect…but never forget.

I went back and forth with how long of a list I would do this year. I settled on the “Top 40” theme since it represents such a great diversity and taste in modern radio. I’ve held it to just those releases that came out in the US during 2007. I added one honorable mention since it is an album, and artist, I discovered in 2007 but didn’t put out any releases this year. Also, to make the picking somewhat easier I did not include any EPs that came out this year. (Sorry Grizzly Bear and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. I still listened to your stuff as much as anyone else on this list, if not more.) I encourage you all to purchase every album on this list and do it through the convenient Amazon.com links I’ve set up on the album covers. (This was a pain in the ass to set up so at least buy it here so I get 3 cents from Amazon.)

Lastly, my singles of the year will come out next week at some point. I know you will all be waiting up at night for that one. To save on load times the list is after the cut:

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This Friday Mix is brought to you by the best movie I’ve seen in 2007, No Country for Old Men.  I read the Cormac McCarthy book a while back in college and really enjoyed it.  I was curious how they would translate the tone of the book onto the screen and I was very pleased in the end.  Stunning vistas.  The cinematographer should be commended for a job well done as this movie makes me want to pick up my camera and take a week long trip to Texas for a photo expedition.  My neighbor back home, Josh Brolin, stars and even wears a Templeton Eagles letterman jacket at one point in the movie.  (He grew up about 5 miles from me but obviously was living it up in the 80’s Hollywood by the time I came around.  He still has a ranch by my parents and has said he wants to retire out there. Now you are fully caught up on the family trivia.)

The music idea was inspired by You Ain’t No Picasso’s post this week where he was inspired to come up with his own soundtrack to this movie, which is lacking in one completely. At least most of these songs are inspired by the movie.

Destroyer – Foam Hands

I can’t say much more about this song that hasn’t been said on every blog so far this week.  Destroyer’s (aka Dan Bejar) new album comes out in March and it will be mentioned on most snob’s elitist 2008 best of list.  To make this fit with the post I’ll just speculate that Dan LOVED the movie. 

M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel – When I Get to the Border

I just posted a Zooey Deschanel song last week and now I have another, who would have thought that would happen?  Actresses singing good songs? CRAZY!  M.Ward is featured more prominently but in the other song they have released it is more like a Zooey Deschanel song featuring M.Ward.  M.Ward is still my favorite Boo Boo Records store employee.  (Yeah, he really worked there while living in San Luis Obispo a number of years ago.) Oh yeah, and No Country for Old Men takes place on the boarder of Mexico. There’s the connection. 

Josh Ritter – Mind’s Eye

Revenge is more an undertone I get from certain characters in the movie. It isn’t a constant thread through the movie as that would have to be fear/dread. (Which I’ll get to in the next song.) The piano solo is pretty amazing in this one.   

Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Another Day Full of Dread

Again, taking the place of a true “country song” but I had to do it in this case.  This is one of my favorite tracks from “I See A Darkness” and is really what inspired this idea after seeing YANP’s blog entry.  “By dread I’m inspired, by fear I’m amused” is so fitting for this movie and could very well have been the theme to the entire film.  Dread and fear are very different emotions if you think about it.  Do not confuse them. 

Robbers on High Street – Seasons Greetings

This came out of nowhere.  I have a number of other Christmas songs by indie bands that I have otherwise never really listened to.  This is so far my favorite “new” Christmas song of 2007.  I dug it up through elbo.ws and have been listening to it like crazy for the past few days.  Now, I just need to get that Christmas mix on here at some point.