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?"

Dancing With Myself: Annotated Edition

So, since Audiography compelled me to write more about my mixes, I'll include the annotated collectors editions here too.

Dancing with Myself is a mix with lots of covers, some French, British, Irish, American, and Brazilian pop, a little R&B, some indie folk, a touch of electronica, and a smattering of bossa nova. Here is the tracklist; below are the notes. It's got a relatively upbeat sound. About as upbeat as I get, I think.

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.

Dancing with Myself -- Playlist
1. Jenny Owen Youngs -- Hot in Herre
2. Tricky -- The Lovecats
3. Camille -- Au Port
4. Aimee Mann -- Save Me
5. Fionn Regan -- Put a Penny in the Slot
6. Nouvelle Vague -- Dancing with Myself
7. Camille -- Vous
8. Nouvelle Vague -- Blue Monday
9. Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot -- Bonnie and Clyde
10. The Indelicates -- A New Art for the People
11. Postal Service -- Such Great Heights
12. Macy Gray -- I Try
13. Lauren Hill -- To Zion
14. Johnny Cash -- Hurt
15. Nouvelle Vague -- Ever Fall in Love
16. Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto, and Astrud Gilberto -- Corcovado
17. Johnny Cash -- One
18. The Decemberists -- We Both Go Down Together
19. Regina Spektor -- On the Radio
20. Elis Regina -- Bala Com Bala
21. MC Solaar -- Inch'Alla
22. Regina Spektor -- Apres Moi
23. Aimee Mann -- Ghost World
24. Beth Orton -- Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine
25. The Decemberists -- Apology Song

Dancing With Myself -- Notes

1. Is the joke ever going to get old, that of listening to an attractive young woman reapportion an incredibly sexist song? Somehow I doubt it. I love Alanis Morissette's version of My Humps, and I can't get enough of Jenny Owen Youngs singing this one. She has an uncanny ability to deliver ridiculously silly with unfailing deadpan. I discovered her in concert opening for Vienna Teng. Luckily, it was the "late" show at the Ark, so I also got to hear her pottymouth, so hilarious paired with her sweet young exterior. What a find!

2. Tricky is just so bloody sexy, no matter what he does. This song is especially fun given its remarkable departure from the cure's original version. [purchase mp3]

3. Camille is COOL. She's an award-winning French pop singer with an experimental je ne sais quoi in her remarkable vocals sort of reminiscent of Bjork, along with play with hambone reminiscent of Bobby Mcferrin. As one reviewer calls Camille Dalmais' work, it's "hypnotic, exotic and distinct". She started her solo career after breaking away from Nouvelle Vague, also on this mix. [More critical discussion on her album as a whole.] [purchase Le Fil]

4. As far as I'm concerned, Aimee Mann's songs are evergreen pop classics. She says about the song: "I like to think of it as the song that lost an Oscar to Phil Collins and his cartoon monkey love song." She sings: "You look like a perfect fit for a girl in need of a tourniquet." Great lyrics, nice vocals, catchy songs, and often touching on a kind of human vulnerability that makes them seem pleasantly organic. [purchase Magnolia soundtrack]

5. Oh, Fionn Regan. Somebody on Audiography got me started with him, and I can't tell you how much I adore this song. It takes you so many directions you're not expecting with its playful, clever, yet soulful lyrics, and his voice is SO CUTE. The bare-bones acoustic sound, the conversational tone peppered with literary references, and the fantastical narrative arc of his story, to me, give the overall effect like you're hearing a song from that quiet, black-clad skinny kid you never thought to talk to in high school, with all his unspoken inner thoughts. (Only, in this case, he has a Dubliner accent.) This reviewer likens him to Nick Drake and Elliott Smith. His album The End of History was one of the 12 shortlisted in the UK for the 2007 Mercury Prize. [video]

6. "Nouvelle Vague" is French for "new wave," and the band's schtick is to take old classics of that genre, without listening to them, and remake them with a whispery, light sound drawing on bossa nova (which, by the way, is Portuguese for "new wave"). The effect is smart and sexy; at times, hilarious, and often dance-worthy. I dance in my kitchen to this song, adding another layer to some existential irony bank.

7. I was making this mix for some friends who had requested some Nouvelle Vague, and I really liked how the jauntiness of the previous tune shifted into this other song by Camille, with its continuing underlying tone (in one sense, the "thread" referenced in the album title) and its minimal, elemental quality: nothing but vocals with that single tone.

8. Though Camille isn't included in this iteration of the band as she was on the previous album by Nouvelle Vague, there's still a kinship you sense between her sound and the smooth, sultry vocals of Melanie Pain here.

9. Somebody posted this fabulous song of Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot during the duets week on Audiography, and its sound won me over. The production delights me with the "wohoo-oo" periodically in the background, the combination of this pair's vocal qualities, and the whole French fascination with American bad-guys . . . [buy]

10. And speaking of bad guys. Well, this song speaks for itself. It shocks you completely with its nastiness, its . . . well, indelicacy. It's catchy if you're not listening to the lyrics. And if you do, you're open-mouthed. Where do you go from a beginning like "But for the come in your hair, the cocaine on your teeth, you'd be just like the girls that I kissed on the heath"?? "A New Art for the People" could be an anthem for those living the rock & roll lifestyle. And it's delightfully, self-referentially, about just that. Hooray for The Indelicates. [preorder their new album]

11. Veronica Mars (RIP) had this song on its soundtrack; I'd heard it before that, but that was when it grabbed my attention again. There's a way it seems to contrast the world of the objective and mechanical with the world of the subjective and organic -- both in its sound, with the highly digitized sounding electronic accompaniment and the vocals floating over it, and in its lyrics, with their attention to the human body and the intimacy of a relationship that others can't necessarily relate to at a distance. The video for the song reinforces this feeling. The Postal Service reminds me a bit of the wonderful magnetic fields in its sound, but it isn't as cheeky and ironic, at least in this song. [buy CDs & gear]

12. Macy Gray always catches my heart in my throat with the soulful, rich, growly sound of her voice, and who can't relate to the kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't feeling she describes in "I Try"? (It's one I especially empathize with at the moment.) Since this got lots of radio play, you probably know it, but I think it can't be appreciated enough. [buy]

13. I was just talking a couple of weeks ago with my friends (for whom I made the mix) about the wonder of pregnancy and childbirth, so I couldn't resist including Lauren Hill's stunningly beautiful song about her son, "To Zion." The friend who introduced me to the song years ago told me it made her cry, and it does me, too. It all comes back around, too, because that same friend is just about to give birth to a daughter, in the next couple of weeks. I like the way Macy Gray segues into Lauryn Hill, too, not only because they have some stylistic continuity, but especially because Hill's intense, joyful confidence and wisdom in "To Zion" gives a kind of nice resolution to the angst underlying Gray's "I Try"[buy The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill]

14. Johnny Cash (happy belated birthday, Johnny!) brings us to a different kind of resolution, though, and his cover of Trent Reznor's "Hurt" has a way of crawling up inside me, giving me goosebumps all over. If you're not familiar with this version of the song, you should definitely see the video, with flashbacks of Johnny Cash's complex life and associations with his many diverse experiences. Having seen Walk the Line gives me even a deeper appreciation of this song, somehow. [buy The Man Comes Around]

15. If we're meditating on love, though, we can't get too dark. With their cover of Buzzcocks' "Ever Fall in Love," Nouvelle Vague remains thematically (and even lyrically) in a similar place as Reznor's song brings us, but their sound takes us back to the lighter side of things somehow anyway, in spite of it all. [enjoy the classic version]

16. And then we take a step back into Heaven with this classic bossa nova recording from Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto, and Astrud Gilberto. "Corcovado" is one of my favorite songs of all time, and one that I was working on performing when I was practicing jazz and bossa nova standards with a guitarist friend of mine in Budapest before I came back to grad school. Is there a Sunday that is really complete without bossa nova? I believe it seriously lowers your blood pressure, with rhythms and gentle sounds that soothe no matter what kind of stress you're under. How can you not be happier when it's in your life? [buy Getz/Gilberto]

17. Ephemerality is a part of life (and love), too. Johnny Cash reminds us here with his lovely acoustic cover of U2's "One". This song in its original and this version is another favorite of mine, with its complex and multi-layered meanings. Is it about Germany? Is it about lovers? Is it about friends? Family? Are we ever to know for sure? The gravelly and slightly shaky sound of Johnny Cash's late-career voice gives yet another layer of meanings to this beautiful song. [buy Solitary Man]

18. Is the narrator of The Decemberists' "We Both Go Down Together" a madman and a rapist? Or just your average upper-class Victorian in a passionate romance with a working-class girl? Does either of these scenarios make this any less of a compelling love song, in its own completely bizarre way? The band's magical gift of fantasy and storytelling comes through with particular grace in this dramatic song, about unity in destruction. [Picaresque]

19. When you see the ever quirky and creative Regina Spektor standing in classroom in front of a public elementary school music class, directing little Black children holding rhythm sticks and then musical instruments, it's odd and a little unnerving, but also playful and somehow a little reassuring. She has a tidy little pop narrative that explains everything about life and love, and it isn't all easy, but it makes it all make sense anyway in "On the Radio." [Begin to Hope]

20. If you don't know the late Elis Regina, one of the superstars of MPB (popular Brazilian music), you should watch this wonderful video of her singing Jobim's song The Waters of March. Her popularity was incredible, and the news reporting of her death and the crowds her casket drew is reminiscent of what I've heard about Cuba after salsa legend Celia Cruz died. "Bala Com Bala" is positively effervescent.

21. Now, a trip into the "solaar system." Claude M'Barali, "born in Dakar on March 5th 1969," was raised in France from infancy by parents of Tchad origin. "'MC Solaar' is adapted from his old graffiti tags SOAR and SOLAAR which he used to spray on the walls of his local housing estate." (source.) For those of you who are American and aren't familiar with "housing estate," think "housing project." These suburban areas of Paris, where North African immigrant families (as well as second and third generation French of North African origin) are most densely concentrated, are some of the same areas where popular discontent over racial & socioeconomic issues has helped fuel riots in recent years in France. The discography of this talented French-African rap artist illustrates how incredibly prolific he is. His sound is very cool, with unusual, Arabic-sounding sampling, French-language singing and rapping, and a unique feel you should enjoy even if you can't understand the lyrics [video there too!] "Inch'Allah" is a phrase that gets transliterated differently in different countries, but that means, roughly, "If God wills it."

22. Oh, Regina Spektor, with her smart references (here, to Louis XV, and Boris Pasternak) . "Apres Moi" is suggestive to me of the wrongheadedness of isolationism, and the house of cards it really represents.

23. Aimee Mann's smart song "Ghost World", inspired by Daniel Clowes' fabulous graphic novel by the same name, paints a vivid portrait of the unique angst and uncertainty of high school adolescents, but in the process also sheds light on something more universal about ambition, desire, and human limitations, I think: "So I'm bailing this town, or tearing it down, or probably more like, hanging around." [review of Bachelor No 2. Buy Bachelor No. 2]

24. Beth Orton is a British vocalist who is so unassuming, with a breathy and slightly tentative way of singing that I find infinitely charming. I saw her in concert at the Austin City Limits music festival several years ago, and was struck by how shy she seemed; you would have thought she was a no-name performer. Some of her music falls squarely into electronica, some of her work incorporates those sounds but draws also on other genres such as folk and jazz, like her artful album Central Reservation. More recent work is more stripped down. This live performance of "Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine" is purely acoustic, foregrounding her subtle and sensitive vocals in this wistful song. [Pass in Time]

25. Sometimes I think The Decemberists just sit around and make up challenges for themselves, or perhaps take them from quirky fans, a la Strongbad, like "Oh, oh, I bet you can't write a good song about an ankle!" or, "Oh, there's no way you could make a plausible song about a stolen bicycle that likens it to a beloved pet girlfriend!" and then they proceed to do just that. "Apology Song" is just one of those fabulous examples of them proving, "Yes, we can, and what's more, we have done." [Five Songs]

Annotated version of Letters from Home to come. [EDIT: It has arrived!]

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