Sunday Mixtape #8

Sadly, the artwork for Charms Around Your Wrist: 26 Absolutions, Vol. 5, completed by Jay Thompson in 2017, appears to be absent or lost. Nevertheless, here is the track list:

Side A:

1. Ex Hex, How You Got That Girl (3:06)

2. Blake Babies, Out There (2:46)

3. Waxahatchee, Under a Rock (2:08)

4. The Raincoats, Don’t Be Mean (4:05)

5. Lower Dens, Ondine (3:07)

6. The Chills, Pink Frost (4:01)

7. Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Heavy Head (5:02)

8. The Softies, Charms Around Your Wrist (3:09)

9. Tiny Vipers, Development (6:08)

10. Mirah, Pollen (2:28)

11. Black Tambourine, Throw Aggi Off the Bridge (3:17)

12. Lovers Without Borders, The Second Most Beautiful Girl in the World (2:46)

13. Barbara Manning, Something You’ve Got Isn’t Good (3:10)

Side B:

1. Your Heart Breaks, Icy Roads to Index (3:47)

2. Jay Som, The Bus Song (3:37)

3. Amy O, History Walking (1:44)

4. Belly, Super-Connected (4:25)

5. Charly Bliss, Glitter (3:15)

6. The New Pornographers, Another Drug Deal of the Heart (1:28)

7. Swirlies, In Harmony New Found Freedom (5:48)

8. Sonic Youth, Wildflower Soul (9:02)

9. Camp Cope, Flesh and Electricity (3:57)

10. Girlpool, Before the World Was Big (2:21)

11. Julia Brown, All Alone in Bed (1:55)

12. Wussy, Halloween (3:48)

13. Cadallaca, Winter Storm ‘98 (3:24)

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This is one of the ten best mixtapes I’ve ever received, and easily the best of the twenty-one in this particular series of Confession, Absolutions, and Reformations. It benefits specifically from Jay’s efforts to make it about 90% by non-male vocalists, reflecting major shifts in the demographic composition of indie rock since Jay and I picked it up in the nineties. Another measure of its greatness: about 60% of these are songs I either have, am in the process of, or would like to learn to play and sing on guitar. Some mixtapes point you toward new artists or reframe known artists; some mixtapes are repositories of songs that make their way into the life of a person or a family, inextricable from both specific times and passing time; some mixtapes are like movies or books in their coherence as experiences in time. The best mixtapes are all of those things, and this is one of them.