October 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. 

Sun Airway at Hammerstein Ballroom, Oct. 3.

1. Sun Airway - "Close." These guys absolutely rocked as openers for the all-around awesome M83 show.  I remember thinking that their instrumental jams remind me of the smooth dream pop of DIIV, but the vocals, which resemble Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig, are much more pronounced (or audible, you pick).  Now when I hear the pulsating drums and the winding electric guitars that jab against the twinkling keys and spacey atmospherics on "Close," I hesitate to draw comparisons; Sun Airway's music can stand on its own, and the band's impressive performance proved it.

2. The Cure - "Just Like Heaven."  I promised myself to listen to more Robert Smith after falling in "love" (har har har) with his cover of the Crystal Castles song from last month, and luckily for me this sunny pop gem happened to be on the Adventureland soundtrack (which isn't as good as the movie but still has its awesome moments).  On "Just Like Heaven," The Cure offer a gorgeous arrangement of strings, synths, guitars, and pianos, which makes the track so instantly likable.  The vocals find Smith emoting, some might say he borderlines squealing, over a girl, but I think it works: he's broadcasting his vulnerabilities through written and spoken words.

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?)

May 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. Built to Spill - "The Plan." Maybe I'm progressively growing lazier, but I now only occasionally seek out lyrics to songs to try to decipher their meanings.  On songs like "The Plan," I am instead moved by the urgency of the opening (it's the first song on their 1999 album Keep It Like a Secret) and the various guitars, which crank out all kinds of noise (some harmonious, some dissonant). "The Plan" just flows naturally; not only do the harsh/soft sounds play off each other, but the pacing of the song, from its fast beginning to the middle's noisy instrumentals to the ending's comedown, captures a kind of free-flowing, almost syncopated spirit with endearingly modest restraint.  It's actually easier to show how "The Plan" succeeds by showing how other songs fail.  Many really good songs get stuck at their choruses and have to slow down or add fluff to extend their track times. Take Sleigh Bells's "End of the Line," a song I highlighted last month; after the second emotionally-charged chorus, the song (at the 2:42 mark) tacks on a slower, whispery section that, to my ears, seems cut and pasted and artificial, thus awkward.  I really like that song, but that one moment sounds sloppy.  This problem, again, is in no way limited to Sleigh Bells; I hear this all the time, especially in mainstream pop songs, which really only need a catchy chorus to succeed.  But that's what makes BTS' "The Plan" so special; their technical mastery allows the song's different elements to flow and cohere. Even though I'm not sure what "plan" they're speaking of throughout the song, musically, they certainly fulfill it.

February 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.  M83 - "We Own the Sky."   So many adjectives pop into my head when listening to this song: spacey, dreamlike, slow, fuzzy, bubbling, nostalgic.  The keyboards that start it are magical, but they're only occasionally foregrounded (which is a shame, I think, but it also makes me want to constantly relisten); instead, all the song's layered elements weave in and out over Anthony Gonzalez's whispery vocals.  The buoyant drum/keyboards on the verses exude what I hear as a confident (even cocky?) swagger--a feeling of invulnerability, that youthful belief that "We Own the Sky."  What a great title.  My biggest, and really only, complaint is that I feel like the vocals at the end sound out of place, or at least do not blend well with the excellent instrumentals, but they don't take too much away from the song.