mari's Scratchpad

Monthly Mixtape: October 2020

• Posted by mariteaux on October 31st, 2020 filed in Monthly Mixtapes
• 1 Comment »

I’ve never been too into playlist culture. Maybe it’s just the way I learned to listen to music, but if a song was meant for an album, taking it out of that context just feels wrong to me. (More singles-based groups are alright of course.) Of course, I’m a tremendous hypocrite because I rarely listen to stuff all the way through–closest I get is a bunch of tracks in the middle in order.

Caby, on the other hand, loves playlists. I’ve seen all the ones she makes–sometimes they have a mood, sometimes they’re dated, sometimes they’re just random catchy stuff. Given that I’ve been mostly not touching full albums lately (mostly! Post on that Vansire tape coming soon), I figured I’d give it a shot in my own weird way. So here’s some songs I like lately. Maybe in a year, I’ll have forgotten all five of these, find this post, and fall in love again. I’ve certainly had that happen before.

There’s no specific mood here–except maybe a lot of guitars and singers. (I’m just linking to stuff on YouTube for this one–embeds always gunk up older browsers.)

Maybe I’ll do it again, maybe not–let’s see.

John Gold – “Fade to Blue”

The Fold Compilation really did expose me to a few really great songs to check out, this being the prime example. I don’t know if this is the same John Gold who has those other albums up on Spotify, but this guy’s of the very wordy L.A. singer-songwriter variety. It’s hard to describe–not really catchy, but it’s got a lovely, warm, rambling sound to it, as does his voice.

I have listened through a bit of these are color days since it is still up on Spotify and places, amazingly. Not sure the entire thing gels with me but at least this and “A Glass House” are pretty quality.

The Naive – “All the Grass You Want”

The Naive is the side project of my longtime favorite c.layne and his brother Brad. dcb was digging The Worst Blast Ever for a bit. I still have the whole thing downloaded, but I haven’t touched it yet. I like this one a lot though, and it’s a free download on Bandcamp if you’re curious.

(MP3-sourced though…that’s always gonna bug me a bit. Wish he had the originals up somewhere so I didn’t have to transcode MP3 -> FLAC -> MP3 and make it sound even muddier. Eh, I’m picky.)

Marcy Playground – “The Shadow of Seattle”

I have a soft spot for 90s one hit wonders–this being the “Sex and Candy” guys. After “Saint Joe on the School Bus” popped up on my radar and I loved it, I decided to dig into the rest of Marcy Playground. I think there’s a few too many slow, druggy acoustic bits, but of them, “Opium” and especially “The Shadow of Seattle” are pretty damn great. Love these downtuned acoustic numbers, Days of the New is pretty great for those too.

Serafin – “Day By Day”

This is the most recent one I’ve been digging. Sorta one I rediscovered from (yes, really) the Madden 2004 soundtrack. Say what you will about muh sportsball games, 2003, 2004, and 2005 had some fucking fantastic soundtracks. Hell, I’d even throw the 2006 one in there; remember playing that one on my older brother’s PSP pretty damn frequently. Good times. Would like to get another PSP someday.

As for the song itself though, it’s catchy noisy punk stuff. Great bass, good harmonies, lots of energy. I read somewhere Simon Pegg was into these guys. No clue if that’s true, but now, every time I listen to it, I think of that episode of Spaced Caby showed me. I have a feeling I’ll be watching that a lot someday.

Inner – “My Philosophy”

And one last one from the Rediscoverings. It only occurred to me on about the 30th listen that there’s actually no melody in the instrumental, it’s all rhythm, and this girl’s (Girls’? Plural?) voice and harmonies are the actual melodic part of the track. A unique one for that reason.

There’s this one verse in there I love–“Love/I’m tired of nostalgia/It’s just trapped imagination/I’m happy with right now”. I feel it.