Here is the track list for 26 Reformations of a Middle Class American Heart, Vol. 3: Where Is the Other Side? which I completed in early April 2022 and mailed in June of that year.
Side A:
Cornershop, Something Makes You Feel Like (4:34)
The Mynabirds, Wildfire (3:12)
Laura Marling, Wild Once (4:23)
Esther Rose, Sex & Magic (3:16)
Black Randy & The Metrosquad, Down at the Laundrymat (3:31)
Mary Weiss, Don’t Come Back (3:34)
White Reaper, Real Long Time (3:18)
Flamin’ Groovies, Yes It’s True (2:32)
Remember Sports, Getting On In Spite of You (2:50)
Petal, Heaven (3:50)
Cate Le Bon, Daylight Matters (4:18)
Elena Setien, Down the Meadow (3:40)
Waxahatchee, Takes So Much (3:07)
Side B:
Tim Rose, Snowed In (4:19)
Sui Zhen, Perfect Place (Edit) (3:26)
Bat for Lashes, Kids in the Dark (3:30)
Kevin Morby, Drunk and On a Star (4:19)
The Pogues, Thousands Are Sailing (5:28)
Billy Bragg, There Is Power in a Union (2:48)
Moon Duo, Circles (3:46)
Death Valley Girls, Dream Cleaver (3:12)
Twerps, Heavy Hands (3:10)
Grace Cummings, Other Side (2:20)
Joan Shelley, The Sway (3:22)
Daniel Norgren, When I Hold You In My Arms (3:28)
Unknown Artist, Not Goodbye (2:29)
The 26 Reformations of a Middle Class American Heart series of mixtapes breaks down neatly into four trilogies — or, if you prefer (and I do), a double trilogy sandwiched around another double trilogy. The sandwiching double trilogy is constituted entirely of proper indie rock mixes — songs that really have nothing to do with one another arranged to make a coherent listening experience at least in the momentary estimation of their creator. The mixtapes rise and fall in their energy according to emergent patterns loosely structured by arcane guiding principles of order, unspoken though well-understood by creator and audience. They include what it’s right to include in order to keep the mixtape rolling. Practically speaking, they are improvisations similar to sets on a radio show.
The continuous double trilogy that constitutes the Vols. 4-9 middle of the series is a set of historical/archival mixtapes that attempt to construct first a personal and then a genre-historical picture of the development of independent music generally and indie rock in particular. The middle double trilogy operates under very specific constraints, each particular to its trilogy identity. Not so with the sandwiching double trilogy, which operates according to the 26-song, 90-minute constraint and is otherwise quite free in its accumulation of elements.
That’s true of the first mixtape in each trilogy, anyhow; it’s less true of the middle of each trilogy, and quite a bit less true of the final mixtape in each trilogy. As the final installment in a trilogy, even a trilogy organized loosely over the course of a mere four and a half hours like this first trilogy was, this mix was destined to be burdened with pulling together the strands and tonalities of the two mixes that made its own being both possible and inevitable.
That it does. This mixtape hears the darkness of the second volume and turns it around into an opening burst of upbeat and energetic songs that carries unabated through its first thirty minutes. But it does not forget the mixed emotions of the first volume, and beginning with Petal’s Heaven it calls that bittersweet tone back into service, even dipping briefly into darkness and despair at the beginning of Side B before returning through a pair of anthems in the middle of the side to beauty and tempered optimism at its conclusion. That trajectory seems to me to include everything that happened in the first two volumes of the trilogy at least in brief.
A mixtape doesn’t always narrate a journey, but a trilogy of mixtapes certainly does, or should — and the driving force of the 26 Confessions/Absolutions/Reformations series of mixtapes is the trilogy. That form turns what might be an assortment of odd songs spread across two decades into a storytelling device that has power beyond individual transitions between songs and structural peaks and valleys across time. Or at least, I believe the trilogy form has that effect on this series. I believe I hear it there.
Sunday Mixtape #12: Where Is the Other Side?