Part I: Illness and Consumption
1. First Floor Power – The Dream – The first ten seconds of guitar strumming sounded promising but then it turned into Saturday night at the lesbian coffeehouse. (1/5)
2. Elliott Smith – Pretty Mary K – While it’s not my favorite Elliot Smith song, I always like his voice and the musical arrangement here is very pretty. (3/5)
3. Cass McComb – I Went to the Hospital – A thirteen year old’s journal entry put to music. Oh, and he never really ends up in the hospital. 0/5
4. Lisa Germano – Cancer of Everything – Love the arrangement. Her voice is okay but this song could be so much better if Marianne Faithful was singing it. The title is a bit melodramatic. (3/5)
5. Talking Heads – Drugs (alternate version) – An barely okay song made worse by putting it in context with the past few songs. (1/5)
Part II: Love and Illusion
6. Of Montreal – Kissing in the Grass – Not a fan. I’d rather hear XTC do a much richer version of this. (2/5)
7. The Replacements – I Will Dare – A welcome relief from the somber tone of this mix. (3/5)
8. Built to Spill – Else – A good song I’d like to listen to again without the constraints of this disc. (3/5)
9. Hip Whips – Temple in My Heart – Is there a voice inside all that ruckus? A whole lotta noise without any soul . (1/5)
10. Brando – Abby Laine - It’s got 60’s hook I like but I just wish the vocals weren’t so fey. (2/5)
Part III: Obsession and Denial
11. The Minders – Black Balloon – It reminds me of a silly but sincere McCartney tune (one of the good ones). With a little mouth to mouth from George Martin this could be okay. Oh yeah, he’s dead. Oh wait, he’s not. But he should be after that Vegas debacle. I digress. (1/5)
12. Dolly Mixture – Everything and More – Another decent song made worse by yet another weak, chick singer. (2/5)
13. The Chrysler – Blue Gold – Meh. (1/5)
14. Pram – Little Monkey, Little Angel – A dissonant mess trying to pass itself off as what? Some kind of avant-garde, jazzy, 1950’s Paris sampler? Not a bit of authenticity here. (0/5)
15. Jim Guthrie – So Small – Even though I’ve never heard this song, I’ve heard this song. A lot. In fact, too much. (0/5)
Part IV: Assimilation and Withdrawal
16. Kings of Convenience - Simply not my thing. (2/5)
[b]17. Shelby Lynne – Leavin’ – Pretty good song. Strong vocals and arrangements but the spoken word in songs are hard to pull off and that’s where she misses the mark. All in all a good find for me. I want to check out more. (3/5)
18. The Twin Atlas – The Game is Fixed – I like this. A palette cleanser in a sea of fairly non-optimistic tunes. (3/5)
19. Pete and the Pirates – She Doesn’t Belong – Another okay song ruined by some strained, fake Belle and Sebastian vocals. (2/5)
20. Cleaners from Venus - Ilya Kuryakin Looked At Me – Ha ha ha. Fun, upbeat song. Nice way to end the mix.(3.5/5)
This is just not my kind of a mix. It starts so low that by the time I get to the Talking Heads’ song it’s just a matter of whether I slit my wrists horizontally or vertically. I like a couple of the songs but with few exceptions, the music gets more and more cheerless as the mix continues. Due to the break titles some of the music gets a little over the top on the high drama scale.
But on a better note there are some nice finds here and I appreciate the effort you took in really personalizing this mix. I also really like your cover image.