Day: April 18, 2011

This mix has been percolating a while. I didn’t know how to move beyond Jeff Buckley’s absolutely epic reading of his lament for his dead father, but it turns out that anger works remarkably well when played against grief and loss. And that’s how the rest of the mix went.

I make no apologies for the elegiac (some would say self indulgent) triple punch of the Death Cab, Cure, and Jane’s songs stacking up all together. Somewhere there is a sixteen year old who’s just broken up with his girlfriend who only wishes he could put that much misery together in one place on the mix that he’s going to send her.

Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s a cappella version of “To the Pines, to the Pines” is both more matter of fact and more chilling than the version by Leadbelly (and the bloodcurdling Nirvana cover it inspired).

1. Dream Brother – Jeff Buckley (Mystery White Boy (Live))
2. Careening with Conviction – Mission Of Burma (The Obliterati)
3. Written In Reverse – Spoon (Transference)
4. Company in My Back – Wilco (A Ghost Is Born)
5. What Is Your Secret? – Nada Surf (The Weight is a Gift)
6. Revelator – Gillian Welch (Time (The Revelator))
7. The Queen Is Dead (Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty) – The Smiths (The Queen Is Dead)
8. Pump It Up – Elvis Costello (The Very Best of Elvis Costello And The Attractions)
9. Radio Cure – Wilco (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)
10. Progress – Mission of Burma (Vs. )
11. Transatlanticism – Death Cab for Cutie (Transatlanticism)
12. Disintegration – The Cure (Disintegration)
13. Then She Did… – Jane’s Addiction (Ritual De Lo Habitual)
14. To The Pines, To The Pines – Bascom Lamar Lunsford (Ballads, Banjo Tunes, And Sacred Songs Of Western North Carolina)
15. Einstein’s Day – Mission of Burma (Vs. )