Wrote this up while listening to it yesterday, third listen overall.

1. Red Red Meat – Chain Chain Chain

Red Red Meat, like Califone, is a band that I always enjoy when I hear them, but never feel impelled to acquire any of their records. This song is no exception. We’ve got the gravelly voice and the distortion. Like it.

2. The Feelies – Slow Down

An upbeat song with a cool guitar part but very understated vocals. Reminds me a bit of the Velvet Underground.

3. Robyn Hitchcock – My Favourite Buildings

A bit of a jarring transition as this song is much more “up front” than the Feelies track. A nice, traditional sounding acoustic song.

4. Tim Buckley – Blue Melody

Speaking of traditional sounding, this is a jazzy vocal track from Buckley (another artist I’ve liked for a long time but never fully explored). I love his voice on this song. This is probably my favorite song on the mix.

5. Grouper – Fishing Bird (Empty Gutted In The Evening Breeze)

I was not familiar with Grouper before this track. This song reminds me of Mazzy Star or the Innocence Mission. Nice song, though I actually think a bit better production values would have helped. Or maybe it’s my computer speakers.

6. Women – Black Rice

I kind of like this too. Sounds like a ‘60s garage rock track.

7. Times New Viking – Love Your Daughters

Another garage track, but with less of a retro feel (or maybe just GBV rather than the Nuggets). It’s not bad, but doesn’t make me that excited to check out more from the band.

8. Crystal Stilts – Departure

Decent track in the vein of the Jesus & Mary Chain, but without the tunefulness of that band’s best work.

9. Cul De Sac – Death Kit Train

Wow, I haven’t thought about Cul De Sac in years. This song reminds me a bit of a Yo La Tengo song that I can’t place. Cool instrumental piece.

10. Cows – Memorial

A now, some nice crunch. Fun little song. Similar bass part to the previous song (and that YLT song…).

11. A Minor Forest – Look at that Car, It’s Full of Balloons

For some reason, I thought A Minor Forest were a long-running 4AD band. But they only put out three albums and none were on 4AD. Who was I thinking of? Anything, this is ‘90s math-rock and not the Cocteau Twins. Surprise! It’s pretty good though.

12. Camberwell Now – Daddy Needs a Throne

Never even heard of this band before. Apparently it’s a side project of some sort to This Heat (who I’m not really familiar with either). Growing on me.

13. Clark – Night Knuckles

And now we enter the looping final stretch of the mix. I’m not a huge fan of this sort of experimental electronic music (if that’s the right term), but this track is actually kind of cool.

14. Dan Deacon – Woody Woodpecker

Ugh. So my next door neighbor laughs really loud and kind of sounds like the last part of the Woody Woodpecker laugh, though at a deeper pitch. I rarely heard him talking, I rarely hear anyone else talking, I never hear the TV, I have no idea what he’s laughing at, but it’s even woken me up at night. So, yeah, can’t take much of this.

15. Busdriver – Imaginary Places

The flute loop is kind of cool. The guy’s voice makes it sound like some sort of novelty track though. Actually, he sounds like a cross between Weird Al and Gift of Gab.

16. Nobukazu Takemura – Kepler

I can’t get into this. Just not for me.

Overall, despite the ending, a pretty good mix. Quite likely to make me check out a few of the bands on here that I wasn’t too familiar with before. And isn’t that the point of a mix?

link?

A note about this mix:

I was limited to what I had on my work computer (because I just can't get anything like this done at home) so that affected the direction of it. The closest I got to a theme was "stuff that was new to me in 2009", and this really only shows a portion of that. Really just the stuff I downloaded. If I'd had all my CDs with me, it probably would have gone more in the direction of the first section. I probably would have put some NoMeansNo, XTC's "Are You Receiving Me?", some Royal Trux, Joe Jackson's "Instant Mash", maybe a Stiff Little Fingers song, probably a Fairport Convention song, and The Meat Puppets' "Sexy Music".

Anyway, it is what it is. I figured those tracks at the end were kinda iffy, but I really do like all of them, even the Woody Woodpecker song. Sorry, I just couldn't resist putting that on a mix.

Very cool that you liked most of it, though. I've been enjoying your mix as well and will give it a 3rd listen and review tomorrow, hopefully.

Yeah, thanks for the mix. I signed up for this, despite only half-heartedly boarding for the past few years, because I kind of feel like I've come out of a long music funk over the last few months. It was time to start seeing what else is out there again.

And it's definitely not your fault that my neighbor wakes me with his woodpecker-laugh. Or is it??

Hmm, a shared malady. Good to see you back.

That Dan Deacon song is awesome.

Did you listen to the mix, or were you just already familiar with that song?

It is pretty cool. He takes something obnoxious and makes something... still obnoxious, but awesome.

Here's my half-assed cover art:

i thought this was going to be songs about buildings. which is a good idea for a mix!

I remember buying his album on emusic a couple of years ago and listening to that song non-stop for several days in a row. Very addictive.

Especially if it has a companion mix with songs about food.