Notes from the Dan Sessions: A New Era Begins

It's been some time since I've posted, and that's because I've been incredibly busy, and when I haven't been busy I've been exhausted. And when I haven't been exhausted I've been trying to squeeze in as much self-entertainment as possible. But I want to keep this up, and I had the very strange idea to post these. "These" are notes I make, as a track listing as much as anything else, for the mix CDs I like to make. Most people listen to their MP3s on their headphones, but I'm perfectly happy with my portable CD player and an album of my own devisement. I call these CDs "The Dan Sessions", and each ends up with a pretentious subtitle. Think of these as a strange chronicle of my life in song, or as simply music recommendations. And I don't have to come up with them, because they're already written!

A New Era Begins

This disc was made during a period of change in my life that ended a sort of bout with despondency, which was also a period in which I didn't make any mixes. It immediately became a staple of long bus rides and quick-paced walks down wide, empty, condo-lined streets.


1. Saliva – “Ladies and Gentlemen”
And the “New Era” begins with a song that’s one three-and-a-half minute proclamation of forthcoming awesomeness. It’s silly and ludicrous in its brashness (“Your ears and your eyes may be bleeding”), but it rocks and somehow it makes it believes that whatever’s coming will deliver on the anticipation. Saliva isn’t anybody’s favorite band; usually they produce generic rockers, but this time they went with their instincts and delivered a genuine pick-me-up that uses phrases like “explosion of catastrophe.”
2. Fujiya & Miyagi – “Collarbone”
Every once in a while we meet something genuinely different, and it’s love at first sight. Or listen. What is this? Alternative Rock? A strange cousin of rap? Low groove jazz? A children’s rhyme? Who the heck are these guys? Their names sound Japanese. There’s a weird moment in the middle where he rolls the heck out of an “r”. There are sections whispered over bass and claps, mixed with pseudo-beat boxing. And then atonal guitar craziness. What really matters is that the first time I heard it I knew it was something special, and this ended up as one of the most-played tracks on my dearly departed radio show. Try walking down the street to this one.
3. Foo Fighters – “The Pretender”
The Foo Fighters, more than almost any band today, are capable of creating albums full of mainstream rock hits while still appealing to those who like to think of themselves as having discerning ears. This song rocks hard, but it also has a soul. “What if I say I will never surrender?” Was well onto my playlist before it showed up over the first “Dollhouse” trailer, which of course it was perfect for.
4. Vampire Weekend – “Oxford Comma”
I recently read someone, not really in a derisive way, proclaim Vampire Weekend “the Whitest Band in the World.” And yes, their biggest hit to date is about commas… sort of, anyway. It’s also about butlers and chap-stick. This is a song that seems laid-back and angry at the same time, barely contained behind the vaguely calypso rhythm. “Why would you lie about something dumb like that?” Another song that introduced me to something genuinely new.
5. PJ Harvey – “Down By the Water”
What the heck is this song even about? It’s like a low growl, wretched and lonely. It gets under your skin like an itch. PJ Harvey can do that. And it ends with a stretch nobody who hears it ever forgets, that whispered chant: “Little Fish/Big Fish/Swimming in the water/Come back here and give me my daughter.” There are strings here, guitar, drums, but they all seem under Harvey’s hypnotic spell, barely alive. A work of amazing power.
6. Matchbox Twenty – “How Far We’ve Come”
Rob Thomas is one of the greatest songwriters living. Yes, Matchbox Twenty has become so mainstream they get played on easy listening, but that’s hardly their fault, and this is a candidate for best song of the year. It’s been used in every trailer, ad, montage you can think of, but that’s because it the kind of song that genuinely works on myriad levels. It’s driving, it’s urgent, and it delivers its intended feeling with surgical precision: This is the end of this, and that is worth being sad about, but the ride delivered, and we should be dancing.
7. Flobots – “Handlebars”
I heard this song one day on the radio and it was probably the highlight of that week. It’s a song about the sin of pride, and not just that it’s a sin but why it’s a sin. It dramatizes the loss of innocence. This is a song that explains Hitler from Hitler’s perspective. That’s a lot to ask of a short piece of music, but somehow it manages it. Some people will hear it and say “there’s rapping on the radio,” as my mom always likes to. They’ll be missing something transcendant.
8. Sea Wolf – “You’re a Wolf”
For a relatively low-key song, this is one that sure gets stuck in my head a lot. There are about five lines in the whole song, but between the song manages between the quietly insistent guitar and the loping cello to keep itself feeling fresh. It pulls you in, like the semi-mystic encounter with a gypsy woman that its lyrics seem to describe. An indie gem.
9. Cold War Kids – “Hospital Beds”
This is a weird song. Cold War Kids are high-pitched and sparse, and the piano bits seem more to twinkle than play an actual tune. Much of the song seems like a sort of chant, a plea for help, but other times a strange joy seeps in. Somehow it feels to me like something out of World War I, with scenes from Atonement, though that would seem contradictory because it possesses the DNA of alternative rock, and makes no particular effort to be retro. It brings us into something so well that we’re almost startled when we’re let out of it five minutes later.
10. A Fine Frenzy – “Almost Lover”
There is no song that can bring me to the edge of tears so easily. It is almost ridiculous, how emotional this song can make me despite having no particular event in my life to tie it to. There are production pieces shimmering occasionally in the background, but it’s essentially just the singer’s voice and her fingers on the piano keys. I love sometimes just to feel; it brings me out of my life and into a place of startling beauty and sharpness. This song, especially in the startling crescendo of a bridge, does that as well as anything I’ve run across.
11. Scissors for Lefty – “Ghetto Ways”
Strategically placed to bring us out of the previous song’s mood, we have a weird, nearly incomprehensible piece of dance music. It’s like listening to a party through the wall. The chorus seems to just be a strange sort of heavy breathing… but it’s infinitely relistenable. It’s minor key enough not be jarring, but it’s still reminiscent of The Killers… after they dropped acid.
12. Rufus Wainwright – “Going to a Town”
A song written and performed with anger, sadness, and longing by an openly gay artist, this is an extremely slow build of piano rock that makes us really feel the repeated line “I’m so tired of America.” When I first heard this song, Obama was barely a blip on the radar screen, and it seemed like we were living in the last days of Rome, overrun with prejudice and malaise. Even before Wainwright starts singing about “bathing the body of Jesus Christ in blood,” he’s captured that feeling better than any other artist I’ve heard.
13. The Swell Season – “Falling Slowly”
This is a sweet little tune that somehow becomes, over the course of its length, about nothing less than everything. Male and female voices swoop over plaintive strings, lamenting how little time we have. It was from the soundtrack for the film Once, but it became much bigger than the little-seen movie it came from, and ended up winning an Oscar and putting its indie-darling creators squarely on the mainstream map. Glen Hansard makes us believe he’s falling in love and it’s making him cry, without irony and with total conviction.
14. Gomez – “How We Operate”
I discovered this song about a week before it went mainstream, largely due to an appearance on “Grey’s Anatomy”. Its main instrument is a banjo, at least for the opening minute or so, and the voice is almost country, but this is unmistakably a rock song. A rock song not quite like any other rock song. It’s like a night drive in the desert, gradually gaining momentum, adding layers, while something truly meaningful twinkles just out of reach. There are ghosts here, and sweeping strings.
15. Maximo Park – “Books from Boxes”
Maximo Park is one of those ice-cold bands with a low, melodic voice, like Longwave or Idlewild, and like most of those that are successful they somehow manage to be catchy, at least on this track. This didn’t make my collection for any special reason other than that I think it’s really good, and don’t seem to tire of it. In the first verse we hear “We can beat the sun as long as we keep moving.” And I for one believe it.
16. The Wombats – “Let’s Dance to Joy Division”
First of all, there’s a band named The Wombats. Second of all, someone wrote an entire song about listening to “Love Will Tear Us Apart” with an ironic ear. It’s peppy and fast, the single punkiest song on this disc. It made my regular playlist, and then somewhere in there it took on several more layers. This is my song about making the best of it in today’s economy. “It can all go so wrong, and we’re so happy.” It ends in laughter.
17. Fleet Foxes – “White Winter Hymnal”
This is the unlikeliest of indie hits. Time recently named it the third best song of 2008, and called it “choral roundelay.” It feels like the Beach Boys through a glass darkly, and it’s very very pretty. In only a few minutes, we’re once again in another world, this one snowbound and quiet. For all that, there’s a surprising amount of rock here, and I would hardly characterize this as a “slow song.”
18. IAMX – “President”
I never heard of IAMX before this song, but I have to seek out more of them. Like “Going to a Town”, this is a minor-key epic of piano rock. But unlike that tune, this one is post-Obama, and comes off more as an insistent proclamation of hope, a march to victory for the little guy. In a year where I found myself vaulted into politics, this song feels like where I’ve been and where my twisted dreams are going. With a circus-organ thump thrown in for good measure. It ends like a foreboding of the future.