Adventures in Modern Mixology: Chapter 1

Out in the unfathomable oceans of recorded music, what do you do when you catch a song you like? Just listen to it? Become a DJ? Devote your personal and professional life to critically analyzing the art form? Pay it forward and start making your own music? All challenging, noble uses of your time and passion. But nah, instead I’m going to keep making playlist mixes. I find fantastic songs all the time and nearly everywhere; seems a shame not to honor them somehow. The task then is to occasionally compile my recent acquisitions, flavors of the month, album highlights, and inescapable audio addictions into a cohesive, mix-sized party (that’s about 80 minutes, abiding needlessly by obsolete CD technology), thereby sharing the euphoria of connecting with these memorable pieces of music, trying to see if the random track alignments will unlock profound truths about our universe, and hoping each time that the next mix…will be the mix home.

1 Ojai / Ray LaMontagne (Supernova – 2014)

Since I no longer “enjoy” a long commute to work, my preferred mix-listening time has bee shorn to about a 30-minute round-trip drive, not even allowing me to get through half of these mixes. That hasn’t really affected the way I put together said mixes except that I now always make sure they’re front-loaded with my favorite songs. Long story short, “Ojai” is the crown jewel of this assembly, the one I’ve adopted as my key song of the week or month or however long it’ll take to burn out. Usually, because I have superficial tastes and a fondness for the cliches of album pacing, the first track is energetic, gate-bursting, and ripe for automotive karaoke, but this is none of that and yet I can’t stop yearning for another bittersweet walk down LaMontagne’s country road. If the music video eventually made for this song isn’t all setting sun-dappled landscapes, lens flares, and introspective half-smiles, then they’re doing it wrong. The song is like Pete Yorn’s “Strange Condition” mating with Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me”, all forlorn reminiscence told by lushly bopping bass, lightly spread twang, oldies piano, and the dusty serenade of his voice.

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2 Good Day / Nappy Roots (The Humdinger – 2008)

Admission: I’m not much of a social creature. Too shy for parties, not much of a networker, I don’t make it to clubs or events much. It’s the quiet married life for me, and as a devout disciple of pop culture, when I’m not actively exploring music online, movies have become my defacto playground for discovering new tunes. As I tried briefly to explain in last year’s Jukebox Picture Show column, for me the wedding of pop music to the TV/film arts is very often a transcendent portal to enrich both mediums simultaneously. The use of this Nappy Roots song to segue into the end credits of the film Neighbors isn’t on such a sublime level, but hearing it for what may have been the first time in that moment, still riding a high from a splendid movie experience, sealed my affection for it. Besides, I have a weakness for the employment of children’s choruses in songs (“Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2”, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, “Hard Knock Life”, Keith West’s “Excerpt from a Teenage Opera“). It’s a jovial, open-hearted welcome to summer, just right for setting the mood as this mix really gets underway.

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3 One of the Survivors / The Kinks (Preservation Act 1 – 1973)

Another song that would make a great side one, track one, at least its exciting classic-rock intro, if not its eventually down-hill, full-length story of a ’50s rock ‘n’ roll hero’s journey from the glory days to over-the-hill status. As part of the failed two-part concept album that many have called the low point of the band’s entire career (alongside their next album, 1975’s Soap Opera), it doesn’t seem to belong. It’s all wild rock ‘n’ roll goosed with piano and sax, like a passing of the torch from Ray Davies’ heyday during the British Invasion of the ’60s to the dawning of Springsteen’s Born to Run opulence of the ’70s. Even though it’s their 11th album, Davies commits to the song as composer and vocalist with the zeal of a hungry young rock star, and it’s that combo of undying passion and creativity that helped secure his legacy as one of the all-time champions of rock music, if not also the meta tinge to the lyrics. Davies always possessed a playful, self-aware sensibility; without ever breaking the fourth wall like The Beatles did, he often winked loud and clear in his lyrics as if sharing his anecdotes, tirades, and little character studies like private jokes with the listener. Here he simultaneously orchestrates a truly rollicking showstopper and eulogizes the first generation of rock heroes. Take it as tribute, as satire, or just turn off your brain and rock out. You can’t do it wrong.

As for how this song made it on the mix, I’m always gradually making my way through a few artists’ discographies at any given time, and The Kinks are one of my longest-term projects, maybe because I keep finding so much fascinating material on each new record. After several years, I’m only up to Preservation, though apparently right on the cliffs of both the band’s precipitous decline and its shift to arena rock. I’m dreading both, but if, amidst his early ’70s preoccupation with woozy, music hall camp (3-4 albums worth of it around this time), Davies is still able to blow me away with an occasional mastery of his rock ‘n’ roll roots, there might be hope for this far less adored second half of the Kinks saga

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4 I Will / The Beatles (The Beatles [White Album] – 1968)

And who better to step in next than their peers from the Golden Age? The relaxed, minimal “I Will” is the sonic opposite of “One of the Survivors” in every way, but maybe a needed breather. Like any music lover who’s already exhumed the Beatles vaults, nowadays I take pleasure in sometimes adopting one of their songs for a while on my latest mixes and playlists, preferably a cut I never quite singled out before. It’s easy to like “I Will” with its nicely measured helping (1:44) of Paul’s creamy romanticism and that light gallop added in the latter half, but it wasn’t until May 2014 that I really took it aside, away from the shadow of the White Album, and let its folksy relevry massage me into a pleasant stupor day after day. Interestingly, of all the songs on that sprawling record, this is the only one that, with a different production (drums instead of bongos, tambourine instead of maracas, chimier guitars), would fit right in on an early Beatles album. It’s a very direct love song, the kind they hardly bothered with anymore come 1968. Paul hadn’t lost his touch one bit.

5 Q & A / Kishi Bashi (Lightght – 2014)

Keeping the delicate, acoustic folk feel going, here’s a (typically) beautifully intimate offering from laptop composer Bashi, an occasional tour violinist for Of Montreal, Regina Spektor, and others. I hate to mention that he’s a programmer, as I can’t shake the stigma of artificiality associated with musicians who compose all their music on keyboards and with computer tools, but it’s the finished product that matters, not the road to it, right? And Bashi’s a multi-instrumentalist anyway so he doesn’t want for skills. I’m not sure which track off his recently released Lightght is the best – the album has a lot to unpack – but this one stood out right away for its token downplaying of violin (it’s there, unless I’m mistaking it for the cello, but it’s hidden behind plucked strings). Rather than ascend to epiphany, thump to club beats, or throb with heart-stopping urgency, as the other tracks do at various times, “Q&A”, like “I Will”, just wafts like a cool breeze with a charmed melody and some romantic sentiments, both worthy of McCartney himself, and offset by a hint of yearning, not only in Bashi’s fragile timbre, which sounds more melancholy than love-struck, but also with lines like “we were together in another life”.

6 Beautiful You / The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (Days of Abandon – 2014)

Now, without upsetting the soft mood but easing into an expansion thereof, we roll over into this star-gazing dream pop epic, the centerpiece of their third album, released a couple weeks ago. They tune the guitars to The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven”, attain some altitude, and invite you to zone out for six minutes as the song just soars. This, to me, is what TPoBPaH are good at, so it’s about time they let one ride (before the inevitable remix, that is).

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7 Young and Wild / The Sounds (Weekend – 2013)

Time for more spunk. The Sounds are more about concise pop music decorated with synths and buzzy rock flourishes, but there’s a sort of ethereal, borderline-shoegaze feel at play with this album closer once it hits its stride, hence the placement. I had trouble enjoying this latest work by the band – Weekend and the album before it, 2011’s Something to Die for, stick to their proven formula, yet lack the cohesive and addicting personality of 2009’s Crossing the Rubicon or the often exhilarating highs of 2006’s Dying to Say This to You and their 2003 debut Living in America. Yet there remains a handful of keepers on this new one, a couple better still than “Young and Wild”, which honestly I didn’t clearly like until giving the album another chance months later. It still isn’t vintage Sounds, but the electronics lend some satisfying texture, and I can almost never reject an anthem. I guess with that title and ethos, you could start a theme mix alongside Snoop and Wiz Khalifa’s “Young, Wild & Free”, though this one’s from a bit of an older perspective. Listening to the chorus demand that you “put your hands up/in the air/listen we are/we are/young and wild!”, you could say it’s a thirtysomething’s deluded cry to re-capture her youth, or you could be optimistic and call it a reminder that enthusiasm for life is ageless. Not that my 32 years don’t worry me (it’s half-time already?!! Is what my brain sometimes thinks in a panic), but I’ll humbly take the latter.

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8 Human / The Human League (Crash – 1986)

You ever have a song that’s been around your whole life but you never really noticed it? For music fans, especially in modern times where all memories and information are a click away, that phenomenon becomes rarer the older you get. I’ve plumbed and collected songs from all eras of my life, and gotten pretty far with all genres of choice. Yet in spite of my eternal worship of ’80s pop, on top of the predilection I have for a good soft rock ballad thanks to being raised around music stations of that ilk in accordance with my mom’s tastes, I hadn’t thought once of “Human” all these years. It’s not even one of those “oh yeah, I always wondered what that was! Finally found it!” moments. I didn’t even realize I would obviously like it until a month or two ago. I know I’ve heard it a hundred times, so why didn’t I ever respond? It’s a mystery. A mystery with a lame finale – it’s been playing on a Liberty Mutual Insurance commercial lately, and that’s where I suddenly realized it was a song and I needed to have it. And it doesn’t even make sense in the cut-and-dry ad, which isn’t trying to be stylish, nor does it evoke anything related to the song or how it makes anyone feel. I think it might literally just be appropriating the second part of the chorus where he goes “I’m only huuuuman/born to make – mistaaaaakes!” Hence your need for insurance. Utterly incongruous song choice, but they got that one line to tie it in! Poor The Human League.

Well anyway, I love falling in love with older singles. Sure, I can dig and dig and dig and keep finding killer songs from the caverns of obscurity, but ones like this give me hope that there are still unearthed gems of yore laying along the frontlines of the mainstream. I can forgive, even embrace the corny lyrics (“I’m only human/of flesh and blood/I’m made” – poetic!), I melt at that synth-and-keyboards hook, and I try to ignore how that omnipresent backbeat sounds exactly like Tear for Fears’ “Shout”, especially during the intro before the synths save the day. There’s also that dorky spoken-word interlude where Joanne Catherall admits that she cheated on him, too – oy, this song requires a handful of qualifiers, now that I think about it. Nonetheless, it heartily satisfies my ’80s-flavored late-night reflection craving.

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9 I Was the Loser  /  Michael Jackson (Xscape – 2014)

When I first decided to swap “Love Never Felt So Good” for a deeper cut in this slot, I thought I was being adventurous, but every time I hear that song on the radio, I kinda regret the move. Not that I couldn’t just change it back, and it’s not like I’m denying myself the pleasure of that Timberlake-assisted jam, but I’m trying to stick by my choices here and it’s damn hard when “Love Never Felt So Good” beckons me with its joyous groove – that song really could and should have been a hit during Michael’s lifetime; still, how great is it that we can all dance along to a delectable new single by the King of Pop all the way up here in 2014?

Okay, but in the name of variety, here’s “I Was the Loser”, another soft-spoken, synthy lament of lost love to carry the mood of ’80s balladry a little longer. After listening to Xscape, I was led down the Internet rabbit hole to Michael Jackson’s Fort Knox of unreleased music. Seriously, just look at this Wikipedia page. If you were able to track down all those songs, you could put together another whole 10 albums for your Jackson collection. “I Was the Loser” is one I was drawn to right away, probably because it reminds me of “Human Nature”, one of my all-time favorite Jackson songs. Don’t get your hopes up – this one, like most music throughout human history, isn’t anywhere in the same league, and there’s nothing revelatory about the writing or the performance. But if you want to take it down a notch with Jackson, take a break from all the elaborate choreography and sensuality and save-the-world grandeur, this small-scale break-up tune will soothe you (musically, at least – lyrically it’s a real downer). Restrained yet shimmery, it dates back to 2003 but sounds like 1984, and echoes even further back than that, as its chorus (maybe inadvertently?) imitates that of “Have You Seen Her” by The Chi-Lites, which may mark this as an egregious rip-off, but that one happens to be another of my lifelong jams, so I’ll welcome any remakes (even M.C. Hammer’s cover of it wasn’t that bad).

10 L8 CMMR  /  Lily Allen (Sheezus – 2014)

Here to keep the groove going is Lily Allen, a little of whom can go a long way for me, but she’s crafty with the earworms, and this number, which I originally heard off the soundtrack to the second season of Girls (it later appeared on her own album Sheezus, but I haven’t listened to that yet), bounces colorfully like her best stuff (“LDN”, “Fuck You”, I don’t know). It’s effervescent electro-pop, sometimes auto-tuned (more for fun than to mask any vocal weakness), essentially a love song, Lily-style: it’s not just that she’s smitten with this guy, but that “my love for him’s absurd”. To me she shares some traits with M.I.A. – two defiant British songstresses who like to fuse hip hop, pop, electronic, and dance styles into badass anthems. Maya works it better and aims higher, I think, but Lily Allen is at least a reliable source for jolly, finger-snapping good times. Her downfall may be an excess of posturing (a recurring line here goes “my man is a bad motherfucker”) but it’s also endearing at times. Confidence can be contagious.

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11 Heaven Knows  /  The Pretty Reckless (Going to Hell – 2014)

More girl power. Did you know Taylor Momsen was in a rock band? Maybe I was the only one who didn’t. They’re on their second album already and don’t seem to be taking the world by storm (but so few artists ever do these days, alas), so I want to believe it’s not my fault. My frame of reference for Momsen is still as the adorable button-nosed tyke in Ron Howard’s nightmare version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas; I willfully avoided the Gossip Girl saga, don’t quiz me on it. So it’s kind of a shock to hear her go all riot grrl-diva on this huge stomper, but she aces it. I don’t know yet how the rest of this new album holds up, but this first single makes me want to find out. Sounds like she’s been reincarnated as Joan Jett, both vocally and conceptually. You might even think this is a Runaways cover the first time you hear it (not-so-interesting side note: Momsen-lookalike and child star peer Dakota Fanning went on to play Cherie Currie in the Runaways biopic). The highlight of the song is that startling group chorus, though – choir parts in pop music usually aren’t so monstrous, but this one sounds like it’s 50-people deep. This effect may be partly achieved by almost impercetibly staggering the vocals; it could possibly be Momsen double tracking a bunch of times over, but they’re not in perfect harmony, which enhances the rowdy vibe and voluminous weight of these segments.

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12 Lazaretto / Jack White (Lazaretto – 2014)

We’ve been strutting since Lily Allen, so let’s keep it going. This is an encouraging promise that Jack White’s new album might be one of the year’s finest, as well as the first time I’ve noticed that, left to his own devices, White reminds me of old-school Beck. He’s always had the attitude, but now that, in addition (not instead – he does all of this in this one song) to his guitar shredding and riffing, he’s gone beat-heavy, knob-twirly psychedelic, and even seems to be rapping more than singing, it suddenly feels like Midnite Vultures up in here. And hey, both of these hipster rock stars dabble in country! I should have seen this coming. I don’t know if this is going to be the highlight of White’s album, but it’s hard to believe there will be anything bigger and kitchen sinkier than this.

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13 Blue-Eyed Hexe / The Pixies (Indie Cindy – 2014)

Yet another song you could crank up with your headphones and synchronize to as you swagger down the street a la John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and a continuation of this mix’s middle rock section, here’s my vote for the best song off the official Pixies comeback record. I’d call myself an intermediate Pixies fan overall – I’m head over heels for some of their songs and respect their innovation, but their albums were too uneven for me. As such, beyond two or three keepers, I have little interest in re-visiting Indie Cindy. And I wouldn’t necessarily want more songs like “Blue-Eyed Hexe”, since it rocks such a primitive formula, one they’ve always done well, albeit sparingly: locking into a thunderous groove and just indulging the noise rock for a few minutes. It takes me happily back to “Stormy Weather” off Bossanova. Doesn’t matter what randomness Frank Black is singing about, just that he brings the panache (and he does on this track more than any other off Indie Cindy – check out that last verse that he straight-out shrieks his way through like Brian Johnson) and the band pummels a conventional rock composition. Sometimes that kind of chugging force is all you need.

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14 Gotta Get Away / The Black Keys (Turn Blue – 2014)

Don’t give up on me after reading this: I’m not a big Black Keys fan. I get why everyone likes them, and their DNA is right up my alley, but most of the time they sound strangely languid to me. Call it part of their act, but it’s a turn-off. I don’t like to say that a band sucks, though (not that The Black Keys do anyway), since in this art form it’s all a matter of taste – even bands who do scientifically suck can still be justifiably beloved, hallelujah – so I’ll at least listen to each new album as it comes out and hope that my ears catch up to the hype. Not gonna happen with Turn Blue, I found out, which is why I’ve got “Gotta Get Away” here, the one song on it that doesn’t belong with the rest of the class. I would’ve chosen no songs of theirs for this mix, but I genuinely dig the old-school style of this final track (its placement at the very end suggests that even the band knows it would’ve made more sense as a non-album B-side). Eschewing any 21st century technique, it could be from the early ’70s power pop phase of classic rock – there’s Badfinger and The Raspberries written all over it. The song drives forward with a slightly wistful, impassioned confidence that could inspire one of those scenes where a bar full of drunks huddle together, raise their glasses, and shout along. I’m down with some of their scrappier songs from the early albums, but the direct, swinging jollity of “Gotta Get Away” is the only one I can rally behind in their increasingly aimless, polished Mach 2 form.

15 What Would You Do / The Living End (Modern ARTillery – 2004)

This basically fits in-between the rock music of The Black Keys and The Colourist, but really it’s a tangent on the mix. A couple of friends and I have this activity going where we pass a spreadsheet between the three of us and rate all the songs on various albums from 1-10. We started out covering the whole Beatles spectrum, then Green Day (they’re a favorite band in this crowd), and we just started a new approach wherein each person selects an album of personal significance and we all have to rate it, whether we’re already familiar with its music or (better yet, and more commonly) not. One of the guys picked this album by the Aussie pop/punk band (best known for “Prisoner of Society” from the late ’90s), which I remember disappointing me back in the day after the fantastic pre-release single “Who’s Gonna Save Us”. Part of the value of this project is diving into the music again and really giving some specific thought to what you think about every track. It’s been an educational exercise so far, even with artists like The Beatles whose songs I thought I knew head to toe. I don’t spend nearly enough time appreciating every, or mostly any, song that interests me since there’s always more I want to find. YOLO, etc. So the project is therapeutic for me, much in the same way that this new mix feature is, in fact.

Modern ARTillery still isn’t very good, I learned, but it’s not as dismissable as I previously thought. For one thing, props to The Living End for not just rushing through a dozen identical punchy punk rockers. There’s a variety in form here, all couched in pop/punk of course but reaching out to include swaths of country, reggae, anthems, and epic prog. This song opens the album with a short 90-second sprint comprised mainly of a descending vocal hook that I just can’t get enough of. It’s also one of the only songs not to feel labored; it’s a reminder of how fun pop/punk used to be.

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16 Little Games / The Colourist (The Colourist – 2014)

This indie rock jam came to my attention while reading the album review on PopMatters, which for me has long served as a reliable hub for discovering perfectly worthy bands like this hovering just outside the mainstream. “Little Games” made a tiny splash on the charts and has already been in an AT&T commercial, which may count as meteoric success in this era of fragmented culture, but it has all the bright, crowd-uniting urgency of a true break-out hit. If MGMT had tightened their songwriting and not gone all ponderous, this might’ve been their 2nd-album single.

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17 Archie, Marry Me / Alvvays (Alvvays – 2014)

Sitting beside The Colourist is this other below-the-grid indie band hoping to win us all over. Based on “Archie” alone, I’m ready to pick up their forthcoming debut album. I could always use more sighing romantic shoegaze in my life, and this song beautifully evokes the far-away mood of Mazzy Star. Alvvays singer Molly Rankin should start a vocal trio with Mazzy’s Hope Sandoval and Camera Obscura’s Tracyann Campbell – I probably wouldn’t be able to tell their dejected lilts apart.

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18 Raining / The Haden Triplets (The Haden Triplets – 2014)

Speaking of holy female triumvirates, it’s about time Petra, Rachel, and Tanya Haden collaborated. Between the three of them, they’ve been everywhere in modern music – Petra and Rachel fronted That Dog in the late ’90s, then worked with The Rentals for a while; cellist Tanya has been in Let’s Go Sailing and recorded with Silversun Pickups, Sea Wolf, and The Warlocks (extra trivia: she’s married to Jack Black); Rachel has worked with Jimmy Eat World, Beck, and Todd Rundgren, and for Weezer fans is best known as the singer on their most famous b-side, “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams”; and violinist Petra, the most accomplished of the sisters, has a handful of solo albums as well as an even longer list of collaborators from The Decemberists to Green Day to Luscious Jackson to Foo Fighters. This sumptuous yet un-hyped record of mostly vintage folk adaptations (including material by the Louvin Brothers, the Carter Family, and Bill Monroe) probably won’t garner them the fame and respect they’ve long deserved, but for those keeping track, it’s another honorable notch on the belt. As produced by Ry Cooder with the stunning clarity of tone and space with which he recently brought out the best in Irish folk legends The Chieftains (and used to marvelolus effect in 1997’s Buena Vista Social Club), the album is radiantly rustic and bittersweet, but its cleverest move by far was sneaking in this 1982 Nick Lowe song. I didn’t even realize it wasn’t another slice of ’40s roots music until much later, so well disguised its contemporary origin by the adorning cellos, violins, and Petra’s lingering falsetto. Then again, Nick Lowe is in a songwriting class of his own, so it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that most songs ever written belong to him, but both the lyrics – clever in their own right, talking of today’s sunny, happy forecast that the singer can’t leave his house to enjoy because he’s caught up in a rainstorm of emotional turmoil, even as the title and sound of the song summon the downbeat vibe of overcast weather – and simple, nearly-hymnal melody feel timeless already. Still, it’s sublime how the sisters transform it, especially during the 30-second bridge in the middle, as the layers of instrumentation bring out the song’s tender sorrow with the richness of a film score suite.

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19 Here Comes My Baby / Tea Cozies (I Saved Latin!: A Tribute to Wes Anderson – 2014)

This song fits here because the band sounds like a lo-fi That Dog (aka Cub, basically). The spirited, reverb-heavy production used for a catchy, modest little song like this Cat Stevens classic also puts it in twee-pop land, a place I’m always delighted to visit. There are some terrific interpretations on this double-sided ode to all the notable music moments from Wes Anderson movies, but sometimes I just need some shallow instant gratification, so of all the unique songs I could’ve selected, I simply went for one that’s already had its fair share of covers (the definitive version for me, by virtue of sounding the most like the polished ’60s oldie this song is meant to be, is still by The Tremeoles) because I can sing along and really, any version of it lightens my mood automatically.

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20 Autos, Moda y Rock and Roll / Fandango (Autos, Moda y Rock and Roll – 1987)

An incongruous choice, but I had nowhere else to put it. This is some very ’80s-era pop by a quintet of Mexican teenage girls that I heard at a friend’s house while watching him play “Grand Theft Auto V”. It was on one of the radio stations and hooked me immediately. It should’ve gone over the opening credits to some light-hearted romantic comedy from its time, like Mannequin or The Secret of My Success. Celebratory horns, an insistent dance rhythm, a bouncy beat, and lyrics high on life (the first verse translates as: “every day after waking up/full of curiosity/I look at the world with a child’s eyes/I like being like this, each instant for me/is like witnessing a great miracle”) – it may not be sophisticated, but sharing happiness in peppy musical style like this is one of my favorite things about being a music lover, and about life itself.

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21 Destination / Nickel Creek (A Dotted Line – 2014)

I was never an expert on these guys, but the stuff I did know was exclusively bluegrass, or at least always made me feel like I was walking through the woods at dusk during the browns and oranges of autumn. Maybe they crossed over to rock and pop forms back then too, but I never heard it, so this Mumford & Sons-esque quasi-anthem strikes me as the band re-tooling itself (after a nine-year recording break) for access to radio waves. Their last few albums were Billboard charters already, yet they didn’t tone down their influences to get there. This isn’t a criticism – the new Nickel Creek album is a winner, and won’t alienate any fans of their earlier albums. But in a few tracks it does court pop songwriting more than ever before (to my knowledge), accentuating vocal melodies and instrumental intensity over instrumental complexity and progressive exploration. No matter: in “Destination” alone, the band commandingly re-asserts many facets of its special formula, including the wonderful singing talent of Sara Watkins (love hearing her hold those notes, with the guys providing back-up) and the sharp, well-blended sound of guitarist Sean Watkins and mandolin player Chris Thile. It’s just that now they’ve cranked up the immediacy.

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22 Somebody to You / The Vamps (Meet the Vamps – 2014)

We end the mix with a One Direction clone. Okay, that’s not nice. I’m an occasional 1D fan (I’m fondest of “I Would” off their 2^nd album), it’s just that some of their songs are too generic even for the early-Beatles-esque love-song pop they imitate, and every album has way too many tracks for such a repetitive act. The problems with (or promises of, depending on your 1D fandom) the debut album by fellow Brit teens The Vamps are, well, identical: it’s 15 songs long and the only variety is the standard alternation between boisterous anthems, club bangers, and sweet ballads. Since the band is only aiming to please, it’s not a bad experience. The songs are all likable by nature, and other than lacking a distinct identity, there’s nothing aurally offensive here. Even the hip-hop verses appended to a cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia” are harmless fun. “Somebody to You” made the cut because there’s an undercurrent of finality to it, like it would be played after the couple reunites at the end of the movie, as we watch them ride off into the sunset with the credits about to appear. It’s the wrap-up song. The protagonist has already made his redemptive declaration of humble devotion – “all I wanna be, and all I ever wanna be…is somebody to you”, says Topher Grace to Zoe Saldana in the final scene of next summer’s Love: The Movie. Plus I’m drawn to songs with groups of people shouting in unison, the kind that dates back at least to The Polyphonic Spree and Dropkick Murphys but also includes I’m from Barcelona and more recently The Mowgli’s and Youngblood Hawke. It’s edging towards played-out status but for now it can still give me an electric charge of enthusiasm.

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And with that I set aside the proverbial record needle. See you in the next chapter, where I might have selections from new albums by the likes of Conor Oberst, Fucked Up, Paolo Nutini, Neil Young, and Elizabeth & the Catapult, plus a handful of older treasures and whatever else alerts my senses along the way. I’m very open to suggestions from anywhere across the music spectrum, so recommendations are welcome. Till then, whether you take an interest in any of the 22 songs I’ve discussed here or just stick with your own curated soundtracks, in the exultant words of the Doobie Brothers, baby let the music play!