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:
Ex Hex, How You Got That Girl (3:06)
Blake Babies, Out There (2:46)
Waxahatchee, Under a Rock (2:08)
The Raincoats, Don’t Be Mean (4:05)
Lower Dens, Ondine (3:07)
The Chills, Pink Frost (4:01)
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Heavy Head (5:02)
The Softies, Charms Around Your Wrist (3:09)
Tiny Vipers, Development (6:08)
Mirah, Pollen (2:28)
Black Tambourine, Throw Aggi Off the Bridge (3:17)
Lovers Without Borders, The Second Most Beautiful Girl in the World (2:46)
Barbara Manning, Something You’ve Got Isn’t Good (3:10)
Side B:
Your Heart Breaks, Icy Roads to Index (3:47)
Jay Som, The Bus Song (3:37)
Amy O, History Walking (1:44)
Belly, Super-Connected (4:25)
Charly Bliss, Glitter (3:15)
The New Pornographers, Another Drug Deal of the Heart (1:28)
Swirlies, In Harmony New Found Freedom (5:48)
Sonic Youth, Wildflower Soul (9:02)
Camp Cope, Flesh and Electricity (3:57)
Girlpool, Before the World Was Big (2:21)
Julia Brown, All Alone in Bed (1:55)
Wussy, Halloween (3:48)
Cadallaca, Winter Storm ‘98 (3:24)
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.
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