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Melting Like Hot Candle Wax (Now With Links)
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It’s silly to make a CD-length mix playlist in 2009. I stopped listening to CDs altogether when I donated my long-suffering 1996 Monte Carlo a couple of years ago. And curation with limits is out. Why limit yourself to a static 80-minute document when you can have your own blog – hell, your own radio station – curating music all year long? Why not just make a big “favorites” list for your iPod and stick it on shuffle?

So it took the following extraordinary circumstances to get me to put this together:

1. I’m secretly an analog dinosaur. I wrote papers on a manual typewriter until I went to college, and made cassette after cassette of 60, 90, and 120-minute songs I recorded from the radio from the time I was six or seven.

2. I keep all of my music on an external hard drive, which went kaput. I’ve had to scavenge data to my overloaded laptop – which means I mostly have only a few songs/albums that I really want to listen to available to me.

3. It’s hot, and it’s summer, so songs about heat and summer keep coming to my mind. And they’re (mostly) not the obvious ones.

4. There are a few really terrific albums that have come out in the last few months.

5. The death of Michael Jackson has me reaching around in my music archive a bit.

So here’s a playlist of songs preoccupying me for summer 2009. It’s titled “Melting Like Hot Candle Wax.” If you’re really slick, you know where that title’s from already.

1. “Build Voice,” Dan Deacon, Bromst

2. “Two Weeks,” Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest

3. “Boyz,” M.I.A., Kala

4. “Summertime Clothes,” Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion

5. “Not A Robot, But A Ghost,” Andrew Bird, Noble Beast

6. “Another Sunny Day,” Belle & Sebastian, The Life Pursuit

7. “Summertime,” Galaxie 500, This Is Our Music

8. “We Could Walk Together,” The Clientele, Suburban Light

9. “Black Cab,” Jens Lekman, Oh You’re So Silent Jens

10. “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” Michael Jackson, Off The Wall

11. “Postcards From Italy,” Beirut, Gulag Orkestar

12. “Two Doves,” Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca

13. “Too Many Birds,” Bill Callahan, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle

14. “The City,” Dismemberment Plan, Emergency & I

15. “Here Comes the Summer,” The Fiery Furnaces, EP

16. “35 in the Shade,” A.C. Newman, Slow Wonder

17. “Summer In The City,” Regina Spektor, Begin To Hope

What music, old or new, are you listening to this summer?

10 comments

I just got my turntable fixed yesterday, so all that super-special OMG LIMITED EDITION vinyl I’ve been buying finally makes sense. I used to kind of think all those vinyl heads were a little nuts, now I’m not so sure…

Give Great Lakes Myth Society’s Compass Rose Bouquet a try. I’ve also been playing the crap out of Deastro’s Moondagger and Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest. Embarrassingly enough I’m also hooked on Lady Gaga.

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“Canned Goods” by Greg Brown is always a favorite summer song.

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(If you buy “Canned Goods” from an online music store, make sure you buy the version from the One Night album.)

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Tal Zaken says…

I’m all over the new Dangermouse and Sparklehorse album, Dark Night of the Soul, only available for illegal download thanks to some gents at EMI. Is it really illegal if the artist endorses its uncompensated release? Also, if you choose to buy it online (a blank CD will be shipped to you), you have the option of getting a book of accompanying, spectacular photography by David Lynch. Totally worth it.

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In heavy rotation right now:

* Hudson Mohawke

* A Hawk and a Hacksaw

* Tunng (…after finally burning out on The Books)

* Dirty Projectors (JAW-DROPPING new find)

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DNotS and Hawk and a Hacksaw are good tips – I hadn’t known the latter had a new album. I’ve already been enjoying Kelly’s tips (thanks Kelly).

Bitte Orca, Orca Bitte, Bitte Orca, Orca Bitte.

Ro, I think you would like Dan Deacon’s album Bromst. It is soooo joyous.

Also, all y’all are down with St. Vincent, right? Right.

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Peter, Bjorn & John. Watched them live the other day and am quite liking their sound. Also the Frou-Frou, the Fray and the Fleet Foxes. (It’s just a coincidence that thsoe last 3 begin with F!!!)

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Matt says…

Besides the aforementioned Dark Night of the Soul, I’ve been enjoying James Blackshaw (i.e. The Glass Bead Game, O True Believers), some modern classical from Johann Johannsson, and — guilty pleasure — Ben Folds Presents: University a Cappella.

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Johann Johannsson! Yes! STRONG second. Fordlandia is wonderful.

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Vicious Vicious – Here Come Tha Police

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