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