marathonpacks' 2008 Mid-Term Mix, Vol. I

Here's the first of two. I wouldn't expect the second until early June-ish, unless I get on my horse before Thursday (probably not). Tracklist below. Enjoy!

128k mp3, 69:58, 63MB

1. The Dø "On My Shoulders" A Mouthful is one of my three or four favorite records this year. It's too long, but that's kids for you. This song, along with "At Last" (on the Myspace) and a few others, are signs of incredibly promising things to come. And yes, to save you the hours of trying to figure out who Olivia Merilahti sounds like, it's her. Remember her?

2. Wye Oak "Warning" With the above, such a welcome B-12 shot of 90s female-fronted post-shoegaze stylee this year. Also with the above, a band who will do better stuff later. Bonus featurette: Watching Andy Stack jam the song out on the drums, apparently for a drum lesson website.

3. {{{Sunset}}} "Diamond-Studded Caskets" The bass player from Sound Team goes solo and thinks he's Skip Spence or whatever. The LP is shapeless and dragggggggy, but "Caskets" is the one spot where he gets it right. I'll always be a total sucker/apologist for hollow psychedelia jams like this.

4. Ruby Suns "There Are Birds" Okay, at the risk of this starting to thematize a little bit, here's another only-the-good-one from another not-great psych album. Ryan McPhun is, let's say, dotty, but the lady who sings this song (did she write it? I don't know) has her head on straight.

5. Apes & Androids "Hot Kathy" I wish they'd chosen to use real horns, but other than that, this song hits my Pleasure Centers (now, with three in the tri-county area!) like mid-Seventies Zappa in his George Duke phase. The nu-primitive disco holler in full effect.

6. Ladytron "Ghosts" I liked Goldfrapp's album this year quite a bit (see below), but that's not to say it couldn't do with a bit more of this kind of thing. The second-most assured and seductive chorus yet this year (see #11).

7. Matmos "Polychords" Drew Daniel is teaching English at Johns Hopkins now, and you always have to worry that these guys--like the two-headed Stephin Merritt of creatively-corralled electronic music--are going to overanalyze one of their album-length concepts and lapse fully into gimmick territory. Hasn't happened yet, though, and Supreme Balloon is a nice little analog-prog thing after the heady, heavy, great great Rose.

8. Goldfrapp "Happiness" Hey here's the aforementioned Goldfrapp, with a great song about, specifically, joining a new-age feel-good cult, and more generally, giving your time and energy over to any group of people who promise to make you feel better. Note that I'm strategically not making any sort of value judgments on this, because Goldfrapp doesn't either. You can read "Happiness" as straight-up self-help triumphalism, or ironic dippy faux-mysticism, and it works either way. It's like Goldfrapp's idea of a po-faced Soft Bulletin song.

9. Music Go Music "Light of Love" I was talking to Chris from Secretly Canadian the other day (run-ins with superstars like this are just part of life in Bloomington, people), and he told me the story of travelling to Sweden on a tip and finding this anonymous studio collective devoted to resurrecting the very-worthy ABBA legacy. Apparently, they've been recording whenever they could score studio time for the last 8 or 9 years, and there's a huge storehouse of songs just like this. Seriously, it's like 4 bearded guys and three super-hot Nordic chicks.

10. Alphabeat "Fascination" Takes the prior song to another level of giddy. Danish New Pornographers complete with male/female harmonies and reckless melodic abandon. Look too good to be real, but are in fact real. It worked out nicely that this song is like the middle of this mix, because there's nowhere to go from here but down, really.

11. Hot Chip "Ready for the Floor" Going down, or "ready for the fall." I'm very clever, yes. Is the one guy from this group wearing a Germs t-shirt on Jimmy Kimmel? Looks like it. The most effortless, flawless melody of the year thus far and great nerdy "floor" wordplay to boot.

12. Mariah Carey "I'm That Chick" Jody Rosen wrote a nice defense of Mariah, as well as her slick little transformation into, well, Amerie for this album (which is good!) I was convinced that Ne-Yo had produced this song, and then I was all "wait, he's really going back to Off the Wall again?", then realized it's some Norwegian super-duo doing their own Ne-Yo. Good for them.

13. Hercules & Love Affair "Hercules' Theme" For a song so seemingly straightforward, it's deceptive, nowhere more evident than within the wonderful, shape-shifting quality of Nomi's singing voice. The "yeah yeah yeah"s groove, but they also taunt, more like "nyeah nyeah"s. The associations with the Greek god are stretched pretty far, but they're still productive. If you're taking Hercules to town and pushing him around after he's shown you how strong he is, you look like the powerful one. This is my song of the year thus far, and somebody's gonna have to put in work to unseat it.

14. The Kills "Last Day of Magic" The best song from an underrated (and I'm sure Matthew would properly argue, misunderstood) album. These guys are going to for the rest of their careers get lumped in with the White Stripes, and that's too bad. This song grinds in a way those other two could never imagine.

15. The Ms "Big Sound" The start of my classic-rock block that ends this mix. It's a big song, sure, but more like "big." These guys consistently find ways to crouch and hide their monster power-pop behind midrange fuzz, but that doesn't mean the Exile on Main Street bits don't show through.

16. War on Drugs "Taking the Farm" Everybody in the indie rock bands seems to want to do a Springsteen thing these days, but this band (lose the name, dudes-- this is how War on Drugs gets into Rolling Stone-- and don't name your next album something as bland as Wagonwheel Blues either plz) shows how to do it correctly. They're even from the Streets of Philadelphia. Okay that was lame.

17. Centro-Matic "Strychnine, Breathless Ways" One of the more dashed-off, but still dashing, cuts from Will Johnson's new split-personality split 2CD with South San Gabriel, Dual Hawks. Johnson can probably crank out this kind of song in his sleep.

18. Stephen Malkmus "Elmo Delmo" The best song thus far from a record that I'm still trying to figure out. Real Emotional Trash is certainly his chunkiest solo album yet, with songs that stretch his typically laconic guitar style out to mini-epic classic-rock/prog proportions (the title track waits six minutes and then breaks into "The Seeker"). "Elmo" is the best song on the record, and one of his best solo songs yet, because it's upfront about being self-consciously hallucinatory, anxiety-ridden, and exciting. Like the rest of Trash, "Elmo" is twerpy and garish; unlike the rest of the album, this song makes the most of those distinctions.