Letters from Home: Annotated Edition

This mix, Letters from Home, has a gentle, sweet sadness to it that corresponds to its smooth, mainly acoustic, often rather minimalist sound. It's brooding, and often retrospective, but not hopeless, and to me, it's suggestive of seeking out a kind of inner strength and appreciating the beauty of love and relationships while coming to terms with our inevitable isolation as human beings.

Note: Anyone with copyright for these songs who wishes for your content to be removed, I will gladly do so immediately if you request that I do so.

Playlist:
1. Ani Difranco - Independence Day
2. PJ Harvey - Ballad of the Soldier's Wife
3. Regina Spektor - Samson
4. Vienna Teng - Now Three
5. The Persuasions - Oh, Heavenly Salvation
6. Orpheum Bell - Pretty as You
7. Sufjan Stevens - To Be Alone with You
8. Jenny Owen Youngs - Bricks
9. Elliott Smith - Between the Bars
10. Eva Cassidy - Kathy's Song
11. Camera Obscura - Books Written for Girls
12. Antony and the Johnsons - Hope There's Someone
13. Patty Griffin - Rowing Song
14. Jenny Owen Youngs - Fuck Was I
15. Vienna Teng - Pontchartrain


Notes:
1. Ani Difranco manages to remain one of the most flexible, prolific, outspoken, and trailblazing modern musicians out there, weaving an Allen Ginsberg-esque confessional quality with down-home folkiness and a pushy yet highly personalized brand of feminism I really appreciate. I was slow to love Little Plastic Castle, probably because it was pushing the envelope musically in directions I hadn't heard her go before, and I was attached at the time to the sound of her early stuff. When I came around to getting it, it became my favorite of hers. "Independence Day," to me, says something profound about vulnerability and our connections to other people.

2. This song, as well as track 5 (missing for now) are from an album of Kurt Weill songs sung by various artists that my friend Dani turned me onto. (Those of you who heard my mix I made in my cottage in Austin several years ago may see no small irony in its title, "September Songs.") PJ Harvey's uniquely brash voice gives a particular chill to the tragic end of the "Ballad of the Soldier's Wife" [September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill]

3. Regina Spektor explains the story of the changes she made to the early version of "Samson" from her self-released album Songs in this interview, which is also telling about her own relationship with her music. As far as she's concerned, the one on her album Begin to Hope is the right version and she wishes she could erase all the copies of her previous performance. Unlike her, though, I personally really prefer the slow one I've included here. It seems so much more intimate and careful, two qualities I really love about this song. The reworking of biblical stories to reflect on much despised female figures is a popular activity, and the Samson/Delilah story seems to have attracted especially a lot of musical attention. Anyway, one of the many reasons I love this song is the way it suggests the mystery in the connection between two people and also the surprising banality and everydayness even of a great tragedy.

4. Vienna Teng grabbed hold of my soul and pulled us into a frenzied, ecstatic dance from the first moment I heard her on NPR. I was further bowled over when I heard her in concert at the Ark in Ann Arbor. Dreaming through the Noise is the first album of hers I got to know. "Now Three" always reminds me of one particular friend of mine, to the point that I think of it really as her song. Initially I started making this mix for her, and then I realized it was as much for me as it was for her. The thing about this song is that it's romantic to the point of bordering on folly, or at the least to to the point of being effacing of everything else. It dives right into the mystical and frightening aspects of love, but does so with so much purity of heart that there's a clarity and a gentle resolution to it.

5. The Persuasions - Oh, Heavenly Salvation [September Songs] Also from the Kurt Weill album, but gone for the moment until my hard drive cooperates.

6. Orpheum Bell is a local Ann Arbor band, whose first album is a little inconsistent, but compelling, and it shows a lot of interesting musical potential, with yummy, pretty vocals from Merrill Hodnefield, and instrumentation that draws on bluegrass, folk, Gillian Welch-like "American primitivism," jazz, klezmer, and Balkan folk music. "Pretty as You" is a lovely, nostalgic song that suggestively touches on something old and mysterious and long-lost. [buy album Pretty as You]

7. Sufjan Stevens is an artist I've been listening to in little bits for a while, but whom I've taken some time to get into. Part of the reason I like this song is its Michigan reference; Stevens is from Detroit, so I feel connected to the geographic landscape he's relating to. I also appreciate the feeling of love and longing he describes in "To Be Alone with You" [Seven Swans]

8. I just love this song from Jenny Owen Youngs, seeking some sense and order in a fragmented and often disruptive world we don't have much control over.

9. Somehow I only 'discovered' Elliott Smith recently. Under the guise of being reassuring, "Between the Bars" is a very dark and disturbing song about hiding from what we don't want to acknowledge. And I can't imagine who isn't tempted to listen to such voices at times of suffering . . . Incidentally, I just heard the Madeleine Peyroux cover of the song, too, which is cool, but I'm partial to the original. [Buy Either/Or]

10. The late Eva Cassidy's cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "Kathy's Song" is perhaps even more tender than the original, and just ever so beautiful with her sweet voice. It's a loving song, but also one about being separated from one you love. Thanks very much to someone in Audiography for introducing me to her. [Time after Time]

11. I believe I discovered the Scottish band Camera Obscura through the British music website last.fm, which I cannot recommend enough, simply by poking around bands similar to others I liked, and bands liked by people with similar tastes to me. The live acoustic version of "Books Written for Girls" couldn't be simpler musically, but I love the sound of it, and its sweet sad wistfulness. [album]

12. "Hope There's Someone" has a bareness musically that resembles the previous song, relying exclusively on piano and vocals. But the stunning and unusual vocal quality Antony brings to the music of Antony and the Johnsons has me rather mesmerized by this band. [catalog] [I am a Bird Now]

13. The repetitiveness of Patty Griffin's "Rowing Song" makes it rather like a lullaby, I think. The lyrics are gently reassuring despite the solitary and wistful quality of the song. [Impossible Dream]

14. The gem "Fuck Was I" by Jenny Owen Youngs is one I first heard from her when she opened for Vienna Teng at the Ark. I really like her G-rated video for the song, surprisingly, too. It's such a simple little song, but it's very catchy, and so immediately easy to relate to.

15. Only Vienna Teng could get away with writing an outsider's song about the disaster in New Orleans that doesn't come across as tacky, maudlin, or sugar-coated. "Pontchartrain" is simply haunting and brilliant. "Who drew the line, who drew the line between you and me; who drew the line that everyone sees?"