Here is the track list for 26 Reformations of a Middle-Class American Heart, Vol. 1: All My Happiness Is Gone, which I finished on the last Friday night of March 2022, along with the second and third volumes of the series.
Side A:
IDLES, The Idles Chant (3:03)
Purple Mountains, All My Happiness Is Gone (4:20)
Dave Bixby, Drug Song (3:25)
John Cale, Heartbreak Hotel (3:14)
Artery, One Afternoon In a Hot Air Baloon (4:07)
FEELS, Deconstructed (1:21)
Liquor Store, Commando (3:32)
The Crookes, Bloodshot Days (3:48)
Baxter Dury, Hotel In Brixton (3:54)
A Giant Dog, Sex & Drugs (2:16)
The Go, Invisible Friends (3:38)
Grand Salvo, Sunshine Holster (3:52)
Built to Spill, Life’s a Dream (4:54)
Side B:
Reigning Sound, Starting New (3:21)
Alex Ebert, Truth (4:21)
Eleanor Friedberger, He Never Mentioned His Mother (4:00)
Vampire Weekend, This Life (4:29)
Frank Sidebottom, Airplay / Big Frank Blasts Off (4:14)
Camille, Twix (2:32)
FEET, Petty Thieving (4:02)
BODEGA, Truth (3:34)
Priests, No Big Bang (2:48)
Le Butcherettes, Bang! (1:49)
Vivian Girls, Waiting In the Car (2:45)
Empath, Hanging Out of Cars (3:18)
The Walkmen, Heaven (4:27)
The main thing those six mixes in the 26 Absolutions series did for me was to expand my sense of what could constitute indie rock. They accomplished that expansion over a period of twelve years, and by the time I got my turn again, I had a lot of music to work with and a coherent plan for how to say back what I wanted to say back. I gave myself a year and a dozen mixes to get it said.
One thing Jay frequently does for me (and which I never do for him) is provide some personal notes about the songs he’s included on his mixes. The reason I don’t do it is because as soon as I finish a mix I’m in a hurry to get it sent out so that it can be heard. I’d like to correct that impulse now.
Side A Notes:
IDLES, Idles Chant. IDLES make a bit of conflict in my soul. They seem to be people I would hate, they often take stances I dislike, and yet their music is fiery and rambunctious in a way that I really appreciate. Kinda like a contemporary Andrew W.K. Purple Mountains, All My Happiness Is Gone. David Berman is one of my ten favorite songwriters. This seems to me to be the central song on his final album before dying by suicide. I’m grateful to him for writing songs that feel full of hope musically even as he was apparently ready to die. Dave Bixby, Drug Song. I know nothing else of this artist besides this song, which feels like the ultimate bad trip bummer song: “How did I get this way? / It’s so unreal / I’m no longer a person / I can’t even feel.” John Cale, Heartbreak Hotel. Strong contender for most alarming cover version of all-time. For me personally, the only real competition is Hawn’s cover of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight,” which exposed the pure desperation at the heart of that terrible song at the Circle Bar in New Orleans thirteen years ago. If only I had a video to share. Artery, One Afternoon in a Hot Air Baloon. A post-punk allegory I heard on Jarvis Cocker’s radio show that makes me think of Pulp’s very earliest recordings, available only on their BBC Recordings compilation that isn’t on any streaming services. It’s interesting to me to think of some of Cocker’s later story-songs and imagine them starting here, or somewhere like here. FEELS, Deconstructed. Can an indie rock mixtape really be complete without at least one rock ’n’ roll freakout that lasts less than two minutes? Liquor Store, Commando. One of those songs I’ve heard twenty times and still have no idea what the singer is saying. And I mean no idea at all — aside from the title lyric, which gets repeated plenty. I think of myself as a person to whom words matter, even though sometimes the evidence is stacked heavily against such a perspective. The Crookes, Bloodshot Days. Oh what a beautiful melody. Oh what a beautiful harmonic structure. Oh what a fantastic use of guitar to augment the melody. Such a bittersweet melancholy joy in this song. And yet another band who, for all I know, never released another song besides this one. Baxter Dury, Hotel in Brixton. Like “All My Happiness Is Gone,” this is a song with plenty of dissonance between the inspirational content and the sonic experience. I like that. Cause let’s be honest — there’s absolutely nothing good going on in this hotel in Brixton. Not a chance. But it sounds like a dream. A Giant Dog, Sex & Drugs. I first heard of this band via a song on the internet blogs a couple decades ago that was called, I believe, “Dude, You Don’t Know.” Or maybe that was The Santa Dads? I don’t know. Who cares. Indie rock is made of so many bands nobody can keep straight. The Go, Invisible Friends. On that note…I’m not sure that when I put this mix together I understood that this was by The Go instead of The Go! Team…or whether those are really two separate entities at all. I know that both bands, if they are separate, appreciate something childish about music. Grand Salvo, Sunshine Holster. One of the things the internet has made easier is learning about what music your favorite musicians are listening to. I don’t remember which one-time favorite loved Grand Salvo, but I do know that Grand Salvo proved to be one of the most elusive bands to track down their music of all the bands I sought out in the pre-streaming era. Almost as bad as Henry Pedro. That this song is on this mixtape is maybe more a testament to that difficulty of discovery than it is a testament to the song itself. Built to Spill, Life’s a Dream. Is there anything more indie rock than saying “I preferred their earlier stuff”? (Unless it’s “They were all downhill after the first two 7” singles.) Built to Spill is one of those seminal indie bands that has been around in some iteration since the late eighties (as Treepeople), and has the additional cred of being from nowhere (which Boise most certainly was in the nineties). This is not their early stuff, but I like their early stuff (now reasonable to call their first decade the early stuff) so much that I’ll always listen a few times to anything new that they release. Lifetime pass.
Side B Notes:
Reigning Sound, Starting New. It’s difficult to believe that this is the same Greg Cartwright who sang for Oblivians and played guitar in The Detroit Cobras. It’s so gentle and pleasant! Alex Ebert, Truth. This is the same guy who led Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, which means he wrote and sang that song “Home” that you probably know. If I’d known that when I heard this song, I probably would have turned it off. Like a jerk. Eleanor Friedberger, He Never Mentioned His Mother. Another singer from a more famous band — she is half of Fiery Furnaces. I like a song in which the title misdirects the lyric. Vampire Weekend, This Life. I have always hated this band, like since the literal first moment that I heard the first moment of one of their songs, back before they released their first album. But I care about music enough that I’ve continued to listen to literally everything they have ever released out of respect for the millions of people who see something in their work that I don’t — a little like my relationship to Paul Simon’s music. Twelve years into that unproductive relationship, it finally paid off with this incredible song. Frank Sidebottom, Airplay / Big Frank Blasts Off. One of the things that keeps indie rock indie rock is the snide eye-rollers who stay entirely irreverent even when they’re making catchy music they’d hate if it was well-produced. Camille, Twix. When I began making this “Reformations” series of mixtapes, my hope was to explore the wider range of sounds in indie rock that Jay had opened up for me in his series. This is the only song on the first mix that actually gestures in that direction. FEET, Petty Thieving. Another stylistic feature of indie rock in the 2000s and 2010s was the ALL CAPS or all lowercase band naming. Some bands (tUnE-yArDs for instance) covered both bases at once. BODEGA, Truth. See? They’re everywhere, those mono-cappers. Which song called “Truth” on this half of this mix do you like better? I like this one better. Priests, No Big Bang. An enduring pleasure: music fully formed in the background, vocalist talking rather than singing. Le Butcherettes, Bang! Sure this song goes pretty well after the song before it and before the song after it, but I definitely put it here just for the pun between the song titles. Vivian Girls, Waiting in the Car. This song is not about childhood. It’s one of Vivian Girls’ best songs about love that isn’t going well. But since I can’t easily understand what Cassie is saying, I can easily pretend that it’s an evocation of one of my favorite feelings from childhood: waiting in the care in the grocery store parking lot. And yes, it was totally safe. Empath, Hanging Out of Cars. This is only the second-most famous Philadelphia-based group to begin incorporating free jazz into a mainstream genre in 2019 (not on this song, but on the album), after Irreversible Entanglements. The Walkmen, Heaven. So much good music (the title track of this mix is a good example) derives its inspiration from what one doesn’t have that they wish they did. And so much bad music derives its inspiration from having it all and feeling smug about it. It’s an incredibly rare song that is both good and about having it all. If you know of some others, let me know.
Sunday Mixtape #10: Reform