3rd annual Songblague mixtape!

Year-end roundup time again. And this time I'm indulging myself and stretching things out to a luxurious 30-song span. No double album configuration this year. This one is a straight, linear fly-through of 2011 postings. The usual caveats apply — these aren't necessarily my favorites of the year, this is one story among millions, very few of these songs actually came out this year. But I've been pretty happy about my decisions lately, and I hope you enjoy the ones right here. Happy pre-New Year!

Laurie Anderson - Excellent Birds
Karla Bonoff - Somebody's Eyes
Dirty Beaches - Lord Knows Best
Kissing The Pink - All For You
Grovesnor - Taxi From The Airport
Vince Guaraldi - Oaxaca
Lush - Desire Lines
Yo La Tengo - Fog Over Frisco
Dylan Ettinger - Penguin Point
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Up Jumped The Devil
Be Bop Deluxe - Orphans Of Babylon
The Stranglers - Nice n' Sleazy
Aztec Camera - We Could Send Letters
Erroll Garner - Body And Soul
Anna Calvi - Blackout
Peter Hammill - Breakthrough
Ennio Morricone - Il Grande Silenzio (Restless)
The Sound - Golden Soldiers
Hot Cold - I Can Hear Your Voice
Tuxedomoon - Atlantis
Inoyama Land - Glass Chaim
Martin Newell - Julie Profumo
Sorcerer - The Dream
Tall Dwarves - Starry Eyed and Wooly Brained
Tom Waits - Never Let Go
Thin Lizzy - We Will Be Strong
Yasauaki Shimizu - Semitori No Hi
We The People - In The Past
Heaven & Earth - Feel The Spirit
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Marty's Song

Bungled Xmas

Christmas/Chanukah/Solstice songs abound. And so many good folks are making excellent seasonal mixtapes. I really can't compete. And besides, I'm in a period of deep concentration with my own stuff. So, before I split for the year, here's a crazy one that's (in)appropriate for any season. A warning – don't be in mid-coffee sip at 1:18. And do listen all the way through; you want to earn those presents.

I'm fixing to have another year-end roundup mix around New Years. New posts will recommence on Jan 2. Happy happiness!

Mr. Bungle - Merry Go Bye Bye

Heavenly earth

I'd say the holiday season could use a little groovy, pastoral psych-folk. Surely there's a kitchen in a rural place where someone is preparing festive food and blasting these tracks. I'm not sure if these ladies are from an actual canyon, but that's where they're filed in my brain's library. You can practically see the spliff smoke emanating from the engineer's lips.

Heaven & Earth - Jenny
Heaven & Earth - Feel The Spirit

Stirring strings

Some more sweet, unhurried waves of sound from a fine guitarist, however unfortunately named. But there's no juicing with this McGuire. Maybe it's because I'm so ensconced in my own digital recording fun, but I can't help smile out loud at a track-yourself-to-your-own-delight situation like this. Some may say it's vanity, but who can't be happy with a world that lets us be our own orchestras.

Mark McGuire - When You're Somewhere

Naptime

I'm not usually the napping kind. My clock doesn't work that way. But there are times when I just can't muster the synaptic quorum to keep the lights on. And I submit. The trouble with the afternoon power-down is the disorientation that follows and then moves to sabotage what's left of the waking day. Dizziness mixed with mania, stuck in a kind of mental hurry-up-and-wait. No fun, but sometimes necessary. Of course, if naptime could just feel like this tune, I'd have no complaints at all.

Robert Fripp & Brian Eno - Evening Star

French frost

Things are starting to settle into that Christmastime feel. And I admit I'm happy to be fitting myself into a cozy mental frame. Which means the contrary part of my mind wants to conjure up creepy, unsettled sounds. This one is wintery alright, albeit more in a nuclear variety. And serves to remind that the French can also set their faces grimly to an ashen sky.

Trisomie 21 - The Fairylike Show

Library ghosts

Some more Simon Reynolds-inspired ghost nostalgia. You don't need to have been raised on British educational television to have an old part of your brain snapped to rapt attention by this jam.

The Advisory Circle - Everyday Hazards

What the heck

Tim Hecker's sketches are more beautiful than many people's masterworks. I could live in his echoes for days without food or engagement of the other senses. That's some ambition. Let's start with a minute and a half and go from there. I think he and I accidentally wrote the same melody. Debating whether or not to sue.

Tim Hecker - Sketch 6

Gone with a rock promoter

Sticking with fond feelings for the '90s. Last Splash came on during a night drive recently, and I got a bit of that old driving-around-rocking feeling from high school days past. Very nice indeed even now that I'm double that tender age. This tune in particular has a burnt, slightly baked quality that I quite enjoy. I'm not really sure the part with the big drums is necessary. But then, it was the '90s and who can fuss with bands that crushed on crunchy guitars.

The Breeders - No Aloha

Color me babe

Having just read Retromania, I'm finding that a lot of music I enjoyed in the '00s now feels tainted with the brush of nostalgia. Or worse, an anemic lack of forward-facing inspiration. Which now makes me look fondly on stuff in the '90s that may have been a bit cringe-worthy, but at least took risks.

Babe The Blue Ox was one band that acquitted themselves quite well in that decade. They just suffered from a lack of hype and boosterism in the Brooklyn of their heyday (hard to imagine such a thing now). Anyway, they rocked with heart, good humor, and some nice Beefheartian rhythmic shenanigans. This track captures all of that.

Babe The Blue Ox - Rube Goldberg

Metamorphoses

Nick Cave has done a lot to mellow over the hellfire punk image of his raucous youth in recent ears. To me, a lot of the "mature" work has been a yawn. But his soundtracks with late-arriving Bad Seed Warren Ellis (The Assassination of Jesse James, The Proposition, The Road) have been just stunning.

For some reason, the duo's excellent score for the equally excellent recent (and surprisingly acrobatic) staging of The Metamorphosis has not been given a proper release. But fear not, for Songblague has done the legwork and tracked down these beautiful cues, which open and close the show. If you don't get a bit misty-eyed, you may not be a real human being.

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - Marty's Song
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - The Water Song

Claustrophobia

Your dreams are haunted by claustrophobic landscapes. The city closes in around you, and you find yourself running for daylight and yet also compelled to caterwaul with oxygen you really can't afford to waste. The camera pans out and your narrative eye suddenly recognizes that the scene is all made of Lego. Here's a good song to listen to you as you contemplate what's wrong with your life.

Zoo-Z - Skylines

So pretty in the city of industry

There are lots of times when texture is everything, and I'm often happy to wile away the hours rubbing musical contours over my ears. Then there's sweet guitar pop, with its equally sublime pleasures.

Oranger - Crooked in the Weird of the Catacombs

Mob rule

Good to be back in New York. A week+ in the land of tango, succulent lomo, reversed moons, and 'relaxed' schedules had me itching to return to a landscape of jagged, if decidedly non-Andean, musicality. These cats are definitely scratching that itch. Maybe a little too hard.

Frank Sumatra & the Mob - The Story So Far

Bon voyage

It's weird that I never really got into Bon Iver, considering the ubiquity of the name-dropping. Or maybe that's been why. Anyway, I admit I'm quite digging the new album, the cheesy parts most of all. Here's one that seems very much of today's moment, what with the scruffy angel falsetto, seemingly mismatched instrumental colors, and general soaringness. Like watching the sunlight dappling on the snow.

Also, it's a good send-off for a much-needed vacation. Going down to the Southern Hemisphere. Back with you on December 6. Enjoy the time between.

Bon Iver - Towers

English sunshine

I have a weird soft spot for provably British singers who sound like they're putting on the accent. I also love that sunny British psych sound from the hazy '60s. Put them together and I'm a smiling fool. A big hi-five to my friend Ali, who hipped me to this track a couple years ago. Also, fun fact — Peter Frampton wrote it. He should have closed up shop immediately afterward.

The Neat Change - I Lied To Auntie May

Living in the past

Oh the endless buried treasures of the mid/late'60s. Some have places of origin that make you wish that earlier eras were possessed of today's incessant documentarian instincts. We The People were apparently a short-lived garage band from Orlando. Take a moment to imagine the uphill battle they faced in an environment like that. Try to picture the reactions of their fellow Central Floridians in the face of such wide-eyed forward-driving sounds. Sadly, their future belonged to Walt Disney.

We The People - In The Past

Are you coming home this year?

I admit I was a bit wary last night when I went to see Ray Davies perform some Kinks klassics with a full-on choir behind him. Turned out I had no reason to be. He was in remarkably un-haggard shape and full of good humor as he trotted out the hits and cult hits, many of which were lifted into happily rarefied airs with all those voices. I'm squarely with all the Village Green preservationists who appreciate Davies's late-'60s pastoral zigging when so many others were electrically zagging. Which fires up a desire to drop some dynamite forgotten tracks that give a little look into a version of the 1960s that never had the chance to get Behind The Music'ed. I'll probably be sticking with this theme through this short Thanksgiving week. Here's some very un-Kinks-ish music to start it off.

Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera - Intro
Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera - Mother Writes

Christmas assault

There are several ways for songs to establish their authority. Some come crashing through your bedroom window with blasts of guitars and cymbals, while others simply walking into the room with a look that says the nonsense will now cease. Here's one from the latter category.

Meanwhile, I know it's a little early to start thinking about Christmas parties. But if yours doesn't include this tune, it's not worth attending.

Willie Colón - La Murga

Trying to get to you

Just can't resist going back to the well of classix. Of course, the Pixies are one of those bands whose weaker tracks are far beyond what most bands could ever aspire to. Last time I dug them up, I got all sentimental. And damned if it isn't happening again right now. This one goes back to some high school delirium that I suspect will get neither hazier nor clearer with time.

Pixies - Letter To Memphis

Grinning like facepacks

For all his command of atmosphere, Eno really doesn't get enough credit for exploring dark mental spaces as well. I've always dug the derangement of this trudging track, but seeing a truly maniacal version at a Here Come The Warm Jets tribute show this past summer sealed it as a Songblague necessity.

Brian Eno - Driving Me Backwards

Music by airports

To the extent that I'm ever "educating" my dear listeners, I realize that there's always someone who knows more about x band/scene/period. That's cool. In many ways, I actually prefer breadth to depth. That said, here's a tune I'm pretty confident you haven't heard, generously introduced to me by a friend with impeccable first-hand knowledge of the underlayers of Kiwi pop.

The Airports - The Song About Walking Around Town Thinking To Myself What A Wonderful Life I'm Living

Reveille

Putting aside the inventive valvework of countless jazzmen, I still have a hard time separating the trumpet from its martial associations. Unless we're talking the ambient strategies of Miles Davis muting or Jon Hassell processing, trumpets make me want to wake up or go attack something. Here's a tune that hits all those notes in sort of a roundabout way. Not a bad thing for a Monday morning.

La Loora - Pre-Catastrophy

The snipers by the falls'll be delivering their calls

Yay for wild Canadians. It seems that Frog Eyes's Carey Mercer aims to be some kind of bookish take on Nick Cave's '80s danger, and I think that despite the think-lipped manners, he is in many ways equally unhinged. But it's the fantastical theatricality that makes him unique. Breathlessness, piano pounding, and shaky drums...all things that get my head a'bobbing.

Frog Eyes - The Oscillator's Hum

Not to raise their voices

There's sweet justice in the recent consensus that George made the best post-Beatles solo album. I still maintain that Paul had the best career overall, but then Ringo was involved in this awesomeness, so the whole debate is bound for stalemate. Of the many gems on All Things Must Pass, this one manages to constantly, if quietly, amaze. Kinda like George himself.

George Harrison - Run Of The Mill

Lunar interlude

With a pair of double-wide posts so far this week, I'd say a little interlude is in order. And I like that it comes courtesy of Jonny Greenwood, whose main paycheck band rarely gets play as a palette cleanser. At any rate, you may know of his compositional ambitions. This one is a lot less ominous, more a moment to pause and reflect on gravity, or conscience, or whether you may have left the iron on before leaving home.

Jonny Greenwood - Moon Mall

Real humans

So it seems everyone's all hot for neon-noir, Michael Mann-indebted sounds these days. And why shouldn't they be? I'm glad folks like the Chromatics are getting their well-deserved cinema time. Drive was exquisitely flawed — with a strange fetish for demolished heads — but it succeeded at least for bringing this fabulous track to light.

As much as the hook, I'm drawn to it for the tenderly delivered lyrical notion that to be 'a real human being' is itself a thing worth rallying around, as much as being 'a real hero'. Which is to say I'm at least halfway appalled that we expect a world of inhumanity, if we even know what that is anymore.

College (featuring Electric Youth) - A Real Hero

Meanwhile, I hate to waste anyone's time with a tune they're probably hearing a lot these days (though I do love me that M83 sonic overload), but this somehow feels like the flip side to the heroics above. The former was smartly used in a smiling, dreamy daylight sequence, while this one seems more the province of the stone-faced night driver that is the go-to mental image for this aesthetic.

Having said that, Anthony Gonzales gets a big high-five for his courageous saxophone deployment in the outro. A real human being indeed.

M83 - Midnight City

I realized my fists were clenched

Robert Wyatt and his cozily alien voice make another welcome appearance on the 'blague. I recently busted out his Shleep record and was reminded of why it's good to keep albums around that you suspect might grow on you. While not the spirit triumph of Rock Bottom, it's a beautiful and weird cycle of sleepy-brained tunes apparently inspired by their creator's insomnia. Good enough that two specimens are warranted. The first was co-written with Eno, and its jaunty, gentlemanly funk gives has that signature all over it. The second is more late-nite in its texture, and I can see the camera slowly pulling back above the spiral staircase as the protagonist shrinks to a shaky point.

Robert Wyatt - Heaps Of Sheeps

Robert Wyatt - Out Of Season

Bad drugs

Oh man, how could I have neglected to post this on Halloween! I'm not much of a goth fan, but I do like how Bauhaus sometimes came at it from a darkly psychedelic angle. This one is particularly queasy, with a swirling dubbiness that seems to come straight from a thoroughly gone night of debauchery.

On the lighter side, every time Peter Murphy moans the chorus, all I see is this.

Bauhaus - She's In Parties

Any vows on lovers' leap

As surely as yesterday's tracks show a less visited side of the 1980s, here's one from the days when college rock did in fact have something to do with the intellectual ambitions of both bands and audiences. Not that it doesn't rock. And not without a charming earnestness that looks fondly on an imaginary utopia of Anglophilic power pop. A nice shade of California love.

Game Theory - Make Any Vows

Two gentle Germans

Tracing the constellations of classic krautrock, you can't get too far without bumping into the boys of Cluster, also known by their excellently mellifluous names Moebius and Roedelius. You may have heard their collaborations with Brian Eno, but their solo work often achieves the same high level of textural minimalism that remains completely engaging at nearly any length. The kind of ambient that almost refuses to let a book or zone-out overtake your mind. Which is a good problem to have. So, in turn, we have Moebius doing movies...

Dieter Moebius - Falsche Ruhe

...and Roedelius laying by a stream, not doing much at all.

Hans-Joachim Roedelius - Mein Freund Farouk

Now I care

Last year, some folks in LA had the bright idea to showcase local bands by having them cover Television's under-celebrated Adventure album. I too have under-celebrated this album because, well, it's not Marquee Moon. Which is itself an over-celebrated album, in my opinion.

Of course, this 'blague has given some tender love and real estate to Adventure's best track. But the beauty of covers is how interpretation can bring out a song's hidden virtues. In this case, a fairly pedestrian four-count rocker grows a country beard and rises glowing and newly translucent up above quiet waters in the beautiful moonlight.

Local Natives - Careful

A touch of Ned

After a weekend of snowboundness, power outages, and hotel hijinks in Western Massachusetts, I'd say a slice of luxuriously decadent pop is called for. If you don't know Ned Doheny, well, why would you? Except that he sits in the same constellation as Steely Dan, Todd Rundgren, and many less celebrated yachtsmen. I'd be shocked if I were told that a bunch of cocaine was not involved in the making of this one.

Ned Doheny - Sing To Me

Future Olympics

Oh man, the endless treasures of vintage Library music. You have to discard some chaff, but the effort yields precious rewards. This one should soundtrack some sort of futuristic bloodsport competition. Or a videogame version of it. Or whatever wild stuff you do this weekend.

Gerard Gesina - Big Green Espace

The floods breathed

Talk about a perfect pairing of music and album cover. This is some hyper-maudlin stuff that may be a shade of gray too far for some. Not me though. I like my emotionally manipulative sounds to be as heavy-handed as possible. I'm just not sure if the imaginary movie should take place in the countryside during the bleakest Soviet days or if it should follow the long, lonely retirement of a discarded stuffed animal. Suggestions?

Sylvain Chaveau - Et Peu a Peu Les Flots Respira

Beards of Uruguay

I trust that on this near-November Wednesday, you're all as keen to groove to some Uruguayan psych-pop as me. These guys may not be Os Mutantes, but they take me to a grainy, blurry Tropicalia wonderland all the same. I bet that 40 year ago, some well-meaning middle class hippies in Uruguay were rocking out to this while hatching idealist impossible schemes, bless 'em.

Limonada - Dejenme Dormir

You've got some Gaul

Oh, the effortless style of the French, at least the way I imagine them back in the early-to-mid '60s. The Franco-centric offerings on the 'blague have mostly centered on the lascivious and goofy detours from otherwise lascivious libertines (not counting Stereolab). I'm don't know enough about Chantal Goya to determine if she's any more wholesome, but this track at least sounds mostly disease-free.

Chantal Goya - Laisse-Moi

Moonwalk

It's good to see bands one admired in college days sound even better with more mature ears. The idea of indie rockers doing chamber music may have seemed like a novelty back then, but the quality of the playing is not only more impressive now, but seems possessed of a dignity that allows an even better aging process. This track comes from an album that took its title from the geology of the moon. It does a nice job of evoking the slow, slightly melancholy walk over its cratered surface.

Rachel's - Kentucky Nocturne

Feral

Why doesn't anyone talk about "freak folk" anymore? Unlike most ad hoc genre tags, I always thought that one was kinda benign, and accurate to boot. A couple years ago, I snatched up many a record that could claim an association to Animal Collective, back when they were caarazeeee psychedelic campfire troubadours. I guess these folks could've been the women's auxilliary. Still a quite charming woodsiness.

First Nation - Female Trance

Elements

Low clarinets...sparse synth notes...space...imaginary saxophones...drift into thin air...phantom breath...brief swollen color diffusion...drop the head back...dream lengthwise...

Yasauaki Shimizu - Semitori No Hi

Music for vampire ballet

I'm trying to not think of this tune as novelty, but when a ballet dancer moonlights as a crooning synth popper, it's hard to really know how to receive it. I suppose that's part of the allure. As is the sheer catchiness.

Karl Biscuit - La Morte

Tom Waits for no man

I've enjoyed Tom Waits's gallery of carnival characters and multi-lensed channeling of American lore for many years now. In a petty sense, it's been disappointing to hear it mostly rehashed over the last few albums, but then, I'd be a total ass to view that as anything resembling a tatter on his many accomplishments. Which is why when I put the Orphans album the other day, it was so pleasing to hear this weird '50s hiccuping rocker kicking it all off. Could old Tom be hearing new voices in his head? Things settled into familiar territory afterward, but it goes to show how a good opening can cast a glow that sustains.

Tom Waits - Lie To Me

And here's a two-fer-Tuesday to give this triple disc set its proper due. A little on the nose, but what heartless bastard wouldn't drop a tear in his beer as his barmates rouse themselves to belt this one skyward.

Tom Waits - Never Let Go

Movement

Gotta say I'm a bit amazed at being able to get my meaningful possessions packed, transported, and mostly unpacked in a relatively short span of countable hours. Now there's the process of acclimating to a new domestic space, but there's plenty of time for that. Unpacking box after box of CDs brings many thoughts to mind. And even more songs. For some reason, this one popped into my head at several moments. Not sure why, but then what fool assigns meaning to any thoughts that come when trying to reconstruct the shape of a collection from poorly packed moving boxes? Maybe something to do with the title.

Badly Drawn Boy - Once Around The Block

Home

It's moving weekend, for the first time in over 6 years. Exciting! Slightly terrifying! I'm not really equipped to go into the emotional details of that process right now, if only because the logistical ones are enough of a mindful. Times like this—trying to make yourself as mobile as possible and gauging the true weight of your possessions—it's best to surround yourself with music that feels like home. Even in German, this is one I can wrap myself in as I alter my center of gravity.

Kraftwerk - Computer Liebe

Sweet guitarmony

If Thin Lizzy had done nothing but bless us with harmonized guitar solos, we would still be forever in their debt. If they had only embodied the streetwise rocker archetype, we would still owe them heavy rotation on jukeboxes the world over. Add to that a fine set of bone crunchers and ballads and I can say it's taken shamefully long to pay them a proper tribute on the 'blague. Here's one from their later days, still full of fire, fueled by booze, and clad in don't-mess-with-me denim.

Thin Lizzy - We Will Be Strong

The truth about America

Thought I'd bring things to a grinding halt around here. Put another way, sometime a song offers no music at all except a well-constructed, multi-idea-synthesizing, passionate, and very human talk about the state of Things today. Give Simon's lecture an hour of your day and your socio-economic understanding will be much enhanced. Promise.

The one from the sun

One of my favorite things about Sun Ra is that the sci-fi presentation rarely tampered with the genuine jazz/r&b/whatever that the Arkestra was into at the time. The music always was made of good solid terrestrial elements. This one sounds like a groovy '50s party at the house of a man who on special occasions puts on the Christmas lights and sequins and jumps up on the table to describe his interstellar travels. Which is really something any good host should do.

Sun Ra - The Sun Man Speaks

Message in a birthday

Well, it's my birthday, and I'm going to indulge a longtime personal favorite. Sting's absurd career notwithstanding, I maintain the utmost loyalty to the Police's brief and excellent discography. I continue to be awed by the supercharged push of Stewart Copeland's drumming, Andy Summers's cool/understated guitar wisdom, and even Sting's attitude, pre-pompous assitude. This song captures the best of their hooks and subtle fanciness in one piece of pop magic. Great for both karaoke belting and jumping around the bedroom solo. Here it is live, exhilarating and seemingly on the verge of collapse the whole way through. Maybe even powerful enough to blow out those 34 birthday candles in my mind.

The Police - Message in a Bottle (live)

Thin men

I'll admit it, I like Suzanne Vega, and always did. She's one of the few coffeehouse types who knows that all those vocal curlicues do not signify actual emotion outside of commercials and rom coms. She sings plain and understated, and bless her for it. She got kinda experimental after that "Luka" hit, and most people didn't care much for that. I know she went folky again later on, but I lost the thread there. Here's a surprisingly slinky one. Part of me wants to hear a version with Donald Fagan singing. And for those of you on the Yom Kippur train, a title that loosely speaks to your foodlessness this weekend.

Suzanne Vega - Thin Man