June Mixtape

Highlighting the songs I've discovered, rediscovered, or repeatedly played each month. The order reflects an attempt to create a cohesive mixtape, not to rank the songs in any way.


1. The Replacements - "Bastards of Young."  Besides being immensely catchy, this seems like one of those rare, generational songs that captures the mantra of 80's punk, or, for that matter, any young, disillusioned counter-culture.  "We are the sons of no one / bastards of the young. / The daughters and the sons," Paul Westerburg sings.  His tone on the chorus is difficult to decipher; it's an odd mix of bitterness, anger, hopelessness, and triumph -- I guess an emotional microcosm of the punk movement itself.

2. Japandroids - "Fire's Highway." 

AND 

3. Japandroids - "Evil's Sway."  I think Japandroids's Celebration Rock is a fantastic album, definitely in contention for the coveted album of the year slot on my blog (I can just see the Vancouver duo anxiously awaiting my mid-December verdict).  My only complaint about the group's sophomore album is the occasional sophomoric lyric; take these lines from "Evil's Sway," for instance: "A candle’s pulse is no companion / when all you see is sexual red. / You burn away your dreams inside a journal / and leave those primal words unsaid."  The diction is clunky and awkward, and it sounds just so in the song.  But then Japandroids drop a song like "Younger Us," or jam-pack brilliance into a line like "we dreamed it, now we know" on "Fire's Highway." So I am happy to overlook some of the words that fall short on otherwise excellent songs.  And, besides my nitpicking, I really love everything about this band; they're full of energy, sincere, and plain-and-simply just fun.  I will be blasting this album in my car all summer, screaming along with Brian King as he shouts, "OH YEAH! ALL RIGHT! Hearts from hell collide on fire's highway tonight."  The duo said that they anticipated their fans's live reactions to their new songs while recording the fittingly-titled Celebration Rock, and they shouted and screamed to their songs as if they were their own fans.  It's a pretty cool recording philosophy, and it shows.  (Also, as a side note, Japandroids said that The Replacements are a huge influence on them -- can you hear the similarities?)