Mixes

2025: The Dead Don’t Die

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Since art can be a necessary distraction, I did not take music for granted this year. Although I spent much of its second half listening to 100 previously unheard albums saved to my streaming library, I also kept up with new releases. To encapsulate 2025, I’ve included selections from all of my top ten albums and fifteen honorable mentions plus twenty more that run the gamut from one-offs (Romy’s declaration of free love, veteran Eurodisco producer Cerrone’s energetic collab with Christine and the Queens) to album cuts (Japanese Breakfast conjuring convincing 90s shoegaze vibes, Alison Goldfrapp leading off her second solo album with her fizziest song in at least 15 years) and isolated miracles like Natalie Bergman’s Nancy Sinatra-meets-Shelby Lynne songcraft or Jamie xx sampling/transforming my favorite old discovery of this year, Terry Callier’s beguiling 1972 gem “Dancing Girl” (itself also featured heavily in the film Sentimental Value.)

The average artist age here likely mirrors my own Gen-X soul, which is not to say I was resistant to the Millennial charms of Chappell Roan’s horny take on Shania Twain, Brooke Combe’s dance apocalyptic or Yves Tumor and NINA (of Bar Italia) aesthetically smashing together to create a joyful noise. Still, when someone as established or venerated (or just plain old) as Tunde Adebimpe (of TV On The Radio), Andy Bell (of Erasure) or even ex-Go-Between Robert Forster puts out a first-rate track, I take notice. You don’t have to be an aging music geek to love Wet Leg’s snark-punk and My Morning Jacket’s gleaming Supertramp pastiche (granted, not everyone will); reheated nachos or not, few could deny the monumental, glorious nonsense of “Abracadabra” as an entirely necessary distraction amidst a world coming apart.

You’ve likely heard the Lady Gaga song without even seeking it out, so instead, I’ll highlight a choice cut from the lead singer of Wilco’s 30-track triple album. I almost can’t not like a song for this title alone but I also love how succinctly it sums up the primal allure of rock (or punk or rap or “insert genre here”) without being pretentious about it. In these messy times, we don’t need reverence or pensiveness but raw, loud, unfiltered emotion and release—“I wanna feel everything,” indeed.

2025: The Dead Don’t Die

  1. Brooke Combe, “Dancing At The Edge Of The World”
  2. Wolf Alice, “Wild Horses”
  3. Cut Copy, “Belong To You”
  4. Ivy, “Fragile People”
  5. Stereolab, “Melodie Is A Wound (Edit)”
  6. FKA Twigs, “Girl Feels Good”
  7. Lady Gaga, “Abracadabra”
  8. Romy, “Love Who You Love”
  9. Mekons, “Mudcrawlers”
  10. Perfume Genius, “It’s A Mirror”
  11. Patrick Wolf, “Jupiter”
  12. Jeff Tweedy, “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter”
  13. Bartees Strange, “Sober”
  14. Hatchie, “Sage”
  15. The Weather Station, “Mirror”
  16. Jamie xx, “Dream Night”
  17. Blood Orange, “Mind Loaded”
  18. Destroyer, “Hydroplaning Off The Edge Of The World”
  19. Jens Lekman, “With You I Can Hear My Own Voice”
  20. Japanese Breakfast, “Honey Water”
  21. Saint Etienne, “Glad”
  22. Natalie Bergman, “Gunslinger”
  23. Pulp, “Got To Have Love”
  24. Andy Bell, “Dance For Mercy”
  25. Cate Le Bon, “Mother of Riches”
  26. The Tubs, “Narcissist”
  27. Matt Berninger, “Inland Ocean”
  28. Cerrone & Christine and the Queens, “Catching Feelings”
  29. Maria Somerville, “Stonefly”
  30. Suzanne Vega, “Flying With Angels”
  31. Anna Von Hausswolff, “Struggle With The Beast”
  32. Haim, “Down To Be Wrong”
  33. David Byrne, “What Is The Reason For It?”
  34. Yves Tumor & NINA, “We Don’t Count”
  35. Chappell Roan, “The Giver”
  36. My Morning Jacket, “Everyday Magic”
  37. Wet Leg, “Catch These Fists”
  38. Robert Forster, “Tell It Back To Me”
  39. Yola, “Amazing”
  40. Florence + The Machine, “The Old Religion”
  41. Pearl Charles & Tim Burgess, “Gone So Long”
  42. Tunde Adebimpe, “Somebody New”
  43. Alison Goldfrapp, “Hey Hi Hello”
  44. CMAT, “Euro-Country”
  45. Doves, “Southern Bell”

Mix: Nothing Can Stop Us

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Jens Lekman’s epic new album Songs For Other People’s Weddings has me thinking about my own wedding. Twelve years ago today, Steve and I got married in an outdoor ceremony at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens near Boothbay Harbor. It’s one of our favorite places and seemed like the best possible space to exchange vows even if it meant some degree of travel for most of our fifty-odd guests.

Keeping the event intimate, rather than hiring a DJ or a band, we put together two iTunes playlists for the reception: the second one was for the dancefloor with all the usual suspects (“Dancing Queen”, “Groove Is In the Heart”, the then-new “Get Lucky”) along with a sprinkling of personal favorites like Calexico’s “Crystal Frontier (Widescreen Mix)”; more of the latter informed the first playlist which soundtracked our cocktail hour and dinner.

I know I printed out copies of both playlists but can’t find either of them now. Thus, I’ve recreated the first one below to the best of my memory. It has plenty of theme-appropriate love songs including one I put on my first mix CD for Steve (“I’ve Been Waiting”), a few long-beloved standards (“Time After Time”, “Not Enough Time”, “Then Came You”) and other classics that have become 21st century Gen-X friendly wedding reception staples (“This Must Be The Place”, “Friday I’m In Love”). 

Such a mix would not be complete with some of our all-time favorite songs. Steve requested “A Message” and “Somewhere Only We Know”; I made sure there was room for “This Is The Day”, “Elevator Love Letter” and “I’d Rather Dance With You” (and also “Spanish Flea” for fun) and together we wanted “California Stars” and “Into the Mystic”. “Santa Fe” looked forward to our honeymoon, while the cover of “Just Like Heaven” that ends this playlist actually led off the second one as it is what we chose for our first dance.

I have so many memories of that evening (many of them increasingly blurry as it went by in such a whirlwind) but one of the happiest was sitting at the head table, my husband next to me, and the euphoric Saint Etienne song that gives this mix its title playing overhead. If I had rarely known happiness and bliss beforehand, I felt both sensations in full force all around me at that very moment.

Nothing Can Stop Us: Chris & Steve, 9/21/2013

  1. The Cure, “Friday I’m In Love”
  2. Aretha Franklin, “Baby, I Love You”
  3. Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time”
  4. Ivy, “This Is The Day”
  5. Beirut, “Santa Fe”
  6. Kings of Convenience, “I’d Rather Dance With You”
  7. Washed Out, “All I Know”
  8. Kirsty MacColl, “In These Shoes?”
  9. Florence + The Machine, “Cosmic Love”
  10. Coldplay, “A Message”
  11. Billy Bragg & Wilco, “California Stars”
  12. Matthew Sweet, “I’ve Been Waiting”
  13. Van Morrison, “Into The Mystic”
  14. Talking Heads, “This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody)”
  15. The Spinners & Dionne Warwick, “Then Came You”
  16. Saint Etienne, “Nothing Can Stop Us”
  17. Luna, “Lovedust”
  18. Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, “Spanish Flea”
  19. Pink Martini, “Hey Eugene!”
  20. Michael Kiwanuka, “I’m Getting Ready”
  21. Keane, “Somewhere Only We Know”
  22. K.D. Lang & The Siss Boom Bang, “The Water’s Edge”
  23. Stars, “Elevator Love Letter”
  24. Sade, “Paradise”
  25. Jessie Ware, “Wildest Moments”
  26. Joan Armatrading, “Love and Affection”
  27. Ryan Adams, “La Cienega Just Smiled”
  28. INXS, “Not Enough Time”
  29. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, “All Over Again”
  30. Katie Melua, “Just Like Heaven”

Mix: Glad

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At quick glance, this mix of new songs from the past three months might appear to have come from the 1990s if one only noticed the artists included: Pulp with a glorious disco banger from their first album in 20+ years, Suzanne Vega with her strongest single in nearly that long, Stereolab back from the dead sounding as if no time has passed and the inimitable Sparks still going strong on their 28th album. 

Fellow 90s stalwarts Saint Etienne announced their new single “Glad” a few months back; when it finally dropped in late May, it fulfilled all expectations of them crafting scintillatingly blissful pop again for the first time since 2017’s Home Counties, albeit with the bittersweet reveal that their upcoming album International will be their last (they’re not breaking up but will not make any more new albums—hold out hope for an occasional standalone single.) Also nearly as much of a shock: the return of Ivy whose last new music came out in 2011. Adam Schlesinger’s 2020 death from Covid seemed to put a definitive end to the trio but the surviving members have compiled Traces of You, a new album with every track featuring instrumental contributions Schlesinger recorded over the years. It comes out September 5 (the same day as International); as for “Say You Will”, it certainly sounds like an Ivy song (and a decent one at that.)

Beloved female voices dominate this playlist from Maggie Rogers (with Sylvan Esso) covering Broken Social Scene and the ever-droll Cate Le Bon to the ever-cheeky ladies in Wet Leg (“Catch These Fists” is no “Chaise Longue” but sharp enough to stoke interest in their soon-to-be-released second album Moisturizer) and even Emm Gryner via her new hair metal (!) band Ovary Axe. To prove I haven’t lost track of actual newer artists, I’ve also included Natalie Bergman whose magnetic and vaguely sinister “Gunslinger” from her upcoming second album My Home Is Not In This World resembles a modern day Nancy Sinatra with traces of Shelby Lynne.

Glad:

  1. Saint Etienne, “Glad”
  2. Natalie Bergman, “Gunslinger”
  3. Ivy, “Say You Will”
  4. Wolf Alice, “Bloom Baby Bloom”
  5. Wet Leg, “Catch These Fists”
  6. Cerrone/Christine and the Queens, “Catching Feelings”
  7. Cate Le Bon, “Heaven Is No Feeling”
  8. Alison Goldfrapp, “Find Xanadu”
  9. Stereolab, “Melodie is a Wound – Edit”
  10. Pulp, “Got To Have Love”
  11. Matt Berninger, “Inland Ocean”
  12. Suzanne Vega, “Flying With Angels”
  13. The Beths, “Metal”
  14. Ovary Axe “Rise Up To Fall”
  15. Alex Lahey, “Don’t Wanna Know”
  16. Big Thief, “Incomprehensible”
  17. Sparks, “Drowned In A Sea Of Tears”
  18. Maggie Rogers/Sylvan Esso, “Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl”
  19. CMAT, “Running/Planning”
  20. Cut Copy, “A Decade Long Sunset”

Mix: The Edge Of The World

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I won’t ever stop making annual playlists but going forward, I’m hoping to curate one of newish songs every three months or so (if I were more ambitious, perhaps this could end up a monthly thing.)

Looking at 2025 thus far, it’s not entirely coincidental that two of my most played new tracks have titles that contain the words giving this playlist its title: newcomer Brooke Combe’s sharp retro-soul and the latest from Destroyer which in the tradition of 2022’s ”June” smashes together a ridiculously catchy hook with near-stream of consciousness lyrics (“My life’s a giant lid closing on an eye”, okay, Dan.) Elsewhere, fellow weirdo Bartees Strange folds something approaching Yacht Rock into his ever-unclassifiable genre-blend, FKA Twigs agreeably harkens back to the moodier stuff off of Madonna’s Ray of Light and nearly 50-year-old postpunk collective Mekons is still kicking with the anthemic “Mudcrawlers” (whose quality bodes well for their forthcoming LP Horror.)

The Tubs’ effortless jangle-pop and Perfume Genius’ venerable art-pop also make welcome returns, each previewing solid albums that may make my year-end top ten; so does Doves, who follow their 2020 reunion with an even better dive into psychedelic textures and sonics on Constellations For The Lonely, here represented by the expansive lead track “Renegade”. Empire of the Sun and Lindsey Buckingham make for natural compadres as much as Robert Forster and wife Karin Bäumler do on the uncommonly jaunty, Lovin’ Spoonful-esque “Strawberries”. 

I’m still tickled that even in this cynical age, a great novelty like Joshua Idehen’s cheeky, spoken-word “Mum Does The Washing” can still emerge from the seemingly endless interchangeable dross one has to wade through (algorithms be damned) in uncovering refreshing new music. It nearly lends credence to the relief that this playlist’s title contains the word “edge” and not “end”.

The Edge of the World:

  1. Japanese Breakfast, “Orlando In Love”
  2. Brooke Combe, “Dancing At The Edge of the World”
  3. Bartees Strange, “Sober”
  4. The Tubs, “Narcissist”
  5. FKA Twigs, “Girl Feels Good”
  6. Perfume Genius, “It’s A Mirror”
  7. Twin Shadow, “Good Times”
  8. Lucy Dacus, “Ankles”
  9. Morcheeba, “Call For Love”
  10. Doves, “Renegade”
  11. Sam Fender, “Arm’s Length”
  12. Empire Of The Sun & Lindsey Buckingham, “Somebody’s Son”
  13. Mekons, “Mudcrawlers”
  14. Hurray For The Riff Raff, “Pyramid Scheme”
  15. The Weather Station, “Mirror”
  16. Beirut, “Guericke’s Unicorn”
  17. Sharon Van Etten, “Trouble”
  18. Robert Forster, “Strawberries”
  19. Joshua Idehen, “Mum Does The Washing”
  20. Destroyer, “Hydroplaning Off The Edge Of The World”

Mix: Mysteries

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Some mixes are tossed off in a week or two (or one particularly obsessive evening); others take much longer to finish. I started this one on a Greyhound bus bound for Manhattan in late April 2006 and completed it nearly six months later for a friend’s birthday. Since then, I’ve played it often, mostly on road trips and before bedtime.

I wanted to craft something that would be ideal for listening to after dark, preferably in the wee, deep hours of the night. I thought back to the 11:00 PM to 3:00 AM shift I worked as a residence hall desk receptionist in the summer of ’95; I also remembered when I used to drive all over Milwaukee at night just to listen to music in the car. My working title for this mix was “Subterranean”, which I thought aptly described the groove I was going for: moody, subdued, hypnotic, chill.

“Lullaby” is a suitably mystifying minute-long snippet from The Wicker Man soundtrack (the original, not the negligible Neil LaBute remake); here it’s a prelude, an opening theme song. “Dress Up In You” gently fades in from some seemingly secret, special place, and so it goes, its indie pop bleeding into The Zombies’ chamber psychedelia, Luscious Jackson’s stretched-out jam barely separate from Brian Eno’s momentous crawl, the quietly dramatic, a Capella finale of VU’s “Jesus” giving way to Stereolab’s blips and bleeps. While some mixes are aptly just that—a true blend, all over the map—here I aimed for something coherent, a simmering whole with more flow.

I was in no rush to finish it, knowing I had the time. I’m glad I let it gestate; otherwise, I never would’ve included the title song, which I owned but barely noticed until it appeared, quite strikingly, in the French film Russian Dolls; nor would I have ever heard the Space Needle song, which popped up at the last minute in an episode of Veronica Mars. The final track, “Spoon” also re-entered my consciousness via a movie soundtrack. It carries a little jolt that’s somewhat out-of-character for the mix, but I get excited every time it comes on—it’s a respite, a diversion, a space to suddenly awaken after nearly dozing off.

Mysteries (October 2006, CD-R):

  1. Magnet, “Lullaby”
  2. Belle and Sebastian, “Dress Up In You”
  3. The Zombies, “A Rose for Emily”
  4. Calexico, “Crumble”
  5. Sun Ra, “Space Loneliness”
  6. TV On The Radio, “A Method”
  7. Luscious Jackson, “Take a Ride”
  8. Brian Eno, “The Big Ship”
  9. Kings of Convenience, “Summer on the Westhill”
  10. Nancy Sinatra, “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”
  11. The Velvet Underground, “Jesus (Closet Mix)”
  12. Stereolab, “Metronomic Underground”
  13. PJ Harvey, “The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth”
  14. Space Needle, “Never Lonely Alone”
  15. Laura Nyro, “Billy’s Blues”
  16. John and Beverly Martyn, “Auntie Aviator”
  17. Animal Collective, “Loch Raven”
  18. Beth Gibbons and Rustin’ Man, “Mysteries”
  19. CAN, “Spoon”

Fifty for 50

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As I reach another milestone birthday this coming week, I’ve added a postscript to the annual playlists I posted throughout 2024, selecting one song from each for a Franken-Mix that spans my entire life to date. I often included the track originally featured with a YouTube link in each playlist, but made the occasional substitution (starting off the entire mix with ideal album closer “Just Another High” just felt wrong).

Taken together, there’s no rhyme or reason apart from the concept itself. Even by not repeating any artists, I still couldn’t find room for *all* of my favorites (apologies to Sam Phillips, Leonard Cohen, Pet Shop Boys, Concrete Blonde, Erasure, Emm Gryner, Donna Summer, etc.) If anything emerges, it’s a rough snapshot of my taste in music cultivated over a half century. One could argue “Upside Down” sort of anticipates “Poor Fake” or that “Don’t Leave Me This Way” and “Free Yourself” are kindred spirits, but that was not the intention of including them here.

From the landmark Mermaid Avenue, an album where Billy Bragg and Wilco crafted music for Woody Guthrie lyrics, enjoy “California Stars”, a song my husband and I have bonded over and a tune that stands the test of time, not sounding exactly like 1998, 1968 or potentially 2028 for that matter.

Fifty for 50:

  1. 1975: Bee Gees, “Jive Talkin’”
  2. 1976: ABBA, “Knowing Me, Knowing You”
  3. 1977: Thelma Houston, “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
  4. 1978: Kate Bush, “Wuthering Heights”
  5. 1979: Supertramp, “The Logical Song”
  6. 1980: Diana Ross, “Upside Down”
  7. 1981: Grace Jones, “Walking In The Rain”
  8. 1982: The B-52s, “Mesopotamia”
  9. 1983: The The, “This Is The Day”
  10. 1984: Rubber Rodeo, “Anywhere With You”
  11. 1985: Kirsty MacColl, “He’s On The Beach”
  12. 1986: Prince, “Kiss”
  13. 1987: New Order, “Temptation (Substance version)”
  14. 1988: Sade, “Paradise”
  15. 1989: Neneh Cherry, “Buffalo Stance”
  16. 1990: Deee-Lite, “Groove Is In The Heart”
  17. 1991: The KLF Feat. Tammy Wynette, “Justified and Ancient”
  18. 1992: 10,000 Maniacs, “Noah’s Dove”
  19. 1993: The Judybats, “Ugly On The Outside”
  20. 1994: Freedy Johnston, “Bad Reputation”
  21. 1995: Jen Trynin, “Better Than Nothing”
  22. 1996: Cibo Matto, “Know Your Chicken”
  23. 1997: Catherine Wheel, “Satellite”
  24. 1998: Billy Bragg & Wilco, “California Stars”
  25. 1999: Fiona Apple, “Paper Bag”
  26. 2000: The Avalanches, “Frontier Psychiatrist”
  27. 2001: Ivy, “Edge of the Ocean”
  28. 2002: Sleater-Kinney, “Step Aside”
  29. 2003: Stars, “Elevator Love Letter”
  30. 2004: Sufjan Stevens, “To Be Alone With You”
  31. 2005: Saint Etienne, “Stars Above Us”
  32. 2006: Marit Bergman, “No Party”
  33. 2007: The Shins, “Australia”
  34. 2008: Martha Wainwright, “You Cheated Me”
  35. 2009: Florence + The Machine, “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)
  36. 2010: Robyn, “Dancing On My Own”
  37. 2011: Destroyer, “Kaputt”
  38. 2012: Of Monsters and Men, “Dirty Paws”
  39. 2013: John Grant, “GMF”
  40. 2014: Future Islands, “Seasons (Waiting On You)”
  41. 2015: Belle and Sebastian, “Nobody’s Empire”
  42. 2016: The Radio Dept., “Committed To The Cause”
  43. 2017: Jens Lekman, “Evening Prayer”
  44. 2018: Twin Shadow, “Too Many Colors”
  45. 2019: Kelsey Lu, “Poor Fake”
  46. 2020: Christine and the Queens with Caroline Polachek, “La Vita Nuova”
  47. 2021: Cassandra Jenkins, “Hard Drive”
  48. 2022: Jessie Ware, “Free Yourself”
  49. 2023: Everything But The Girl, “Run A Red Light”
  50. 2024: Alison Moyet, “Such Small Ale”

Halfway Through 2024: Music

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Still making an effort to absorb new albums in 2024, though admittedly my listening as of late defaults to playlists, particularly the annual ones I’ve been posting on a weekly basis all year long. Nonetheless, I can easily name ten albums I will try to keep in rotation throughout the summer and fall. Few of these come close to Black Rainbows, Weather Alive or Queens of the Summer Hotel; then again, none of those came out in the first halves of their respective years, either.

ALBUMS (in alphabetical order by artist):

  • Andrew Bird, Sunday Morning Put-On
  • Another Sky, Beach Day
  • Beth Gibbons, Lives Outgrown
  • Gruff Rhys, Sadness Sets Me Free
  • High Llamas, Hey Panda
  • Hurray For The Riff Raff, The Past Is Still Alive
  • Jessica Pratt, Here In The Pitch
  • Julia Holter, Something In The Room She Moves
  • Katie Pruitt, Mantras
  • Maggie Rogers, Don’t Forget Me

TRACKS (not from above albums):

  • Alison Moyet, “Such Small Ale”
  • Beabadoobee, “Take A Bite”
  • Billie Eilish, “Birds of a Feather”
  • Camera Obscura, “Big Love”
  • Cassandra Jenkins, “Only One”
  • Crowded House, “Teenage Summer”
  • Gossip, “Real Power”
  • Kacey Musgraves, “Cardinal”
  • The Last Dinner Party, “The Feminine Urge”
  • Orville Peck/Kylie Minogue/Diplo, “Midnight Ride”
  • Pernice Brothers, “Who Will You Believe”
  • Pet Shop Boys, “Dancing Star”
  • Real Estate, “Flowers”
  • Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso”
  • Vampire Weekend, “Prep-School Gangsters”

Mix: Elevator To The Moon

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In midlife, I find myself more receptive to aesthetics I would have deemed inconceivable in my youth: adventurous cuisines and libations (the twenty-year-old me would’ve shuddered at a sushi dinner or a glass of rye whiskey), facial hair as an attractive feature (though not necessarily on myself) and most of all, music deemed seriously unhip by my peers. I mean, at 21, I listened to Dionne Warwick as often as I did Blur or XTC but in the past few years, I’ve had a newfound craving for mid-20th century instrumental Lounge and Exotica, not to mention that terminal scourge of a genre, Easy Listening.

I wonder if it’s an attempt to return to early childhood. At that impressionable age, I’d often find solace in WEZW (“E-Z 104 FM” (actually 103.7)), Milwaukee’s own easy listening station. A few years back, I came across a recording from it circa June 1980 on YouTube and with it, a flood of long-dormant memories. My parents would play it in the car (not as often as their beloved “Mix” station WMYX, which unlike WEZW is still on the air) and I’d occasionally hear it out in the wild (mostly at barber shops, doctors’ waiting rooms, even in the principal’s office once when I was sick in fourth grade.) It was practically a staple all through December when it would (mostly) switch over to a holiday music format.

Last year, I began compiling a Spotify playlist called “Elevator to Bliss”, generally adding tracks via the app’s “Let’s Find Something For Your Playlist” algorithm. Whittled down from 50-odd tracks and retitled to fit its space-age vibes (in many senses of the term), some of the thirty selections below might’ve appeared on WEZW back in the day, but not all. As one digs deeper into the notion of “Elevator Music” (Joseph Lanza’s book of the same name is an enlightening resource), one excavates genres upon subgenres. Often, what separates the (mildly) stimulating from the merely soothing comes down to a matter of personal taste; this is the sort of playlist that is also effective when left on shuffle. However, I’ve attempted a trajectory of sorts, beginning and ending with different versions of the same tune, exhibiting how easily an instrumental shlock hit can be gently repurposed as sci-fi camp (by Mr. Spock, no less!)

In between those alternate-world bookends sits a cornucopia of film music from renown masters (John Barry, Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin) and more cultish figures (Riz Ortolani, Sven Liabek, Carlos Rustichelli) along with a few selections from the early 70s (themes from Airport and Klute) that anticipate primetime soap opera scores from later in that decade. Cool Jazz is also represented with vibraphonist Cal Tjader rubbing shoulders against Bossa Nova king Antonio Carlos Jobin and flautist Herbie Mann. If we’re including the 70s, we have to make room for some instrumental funk (Charles Stepney) and such genre-bending oddities as Michel Polnareff’s “Voyages” and Alain Tew’s spare but sex-x-y “The Fence”.

I turn to this playlist when I want to zone out to instrumental music, whether while writing, working, walking or drifting off to sleep. Still, it’s not exactly the same as background or ambient noise. I no longer believe in “guilty pleasures”—all that matters to me these days is how pleasing I find the music; this playlist does the job.

Haunted Jukebox Mix #7: Elevator To The Moon

Mix: Feels Like Summer (2003)

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Twenty summers ago, I made my last ever mixtape—that is, a music mix on a C-90 cassette as opposed to a blank compact disc. A few months earlier, I had acquired my very first laptop computer (dude, I got a Dell) which allowed me to make the move from analog to digital.

By late July 2003, I had a few mix CDs under my belt but circumstance gave me an excuse to make one more mixtape. In my hometown of Milwaukee, I met up with my parents (who then lived in Iowa) for three nights; then, I spent another six nights with my friend Laura, a Chicago native whom I met as a student at Marquette University some years before. I’d moved to Boston shortly after graduation but she stayed on. Between her job at a nursery and other family commitments, I was left alone roughly half of that time to apartment-sit, see other old friends and explore the city I’d left behind. Laura lived on the East Side just off Oakland Ave and I had a blast visiting all the old haunts, from the Oriental and Downer Theatres to Bradford Beach, Atomic Records and even Klode Park out in Whitefish Bay.

With ample time on my hands, I curated a mixtape for Laura as a thankful gesture for putting me up. I had brought an entire Case Logic 128-capacity CD wallet with me stuffed with all-time faves, recent purchases and a few discs I had to review for Splendid!, a music website I wrote for at the time; I may have also schlepped a blank tape with me purposely for this task. Laura was (and continues to be) a friend I make mixes for on an annual basis, going all the way back to our senior year at MU when we first bonded as friends and I crafted her a tape she dubbed the “Kriofske Mix” (a moniker I lent to two of my (now former) blogs.)

Revisiting this mix two decades on, I feel transported back to my late 20’s, an primordial era where I apparently thought nothing of including two songs by Ani DiFranco, two tracks from the Punch-Drunk Love soundtrack, an album cut from The White Stripes’ then-new Elephant (my #2 album of that year, I haven’t listened to it in at least 15) and the gauzy opener from Blur’s then-new Think Thank (also not heard in full in a long, long time.) I had also recently gotten into The Go-Betweens, The New Pornographers and Mary Lou Lord—hearing what I selected from each again reminds me what it was like to discover an artist one connected with so instantly you’d rush out and devour their back catalog piece by piece depending on what you could find in (for me, mostly used) record stores.

Among these twenty tracks, six are from albums I reviewed for Splendid! Required to write about everything from obnoxious prog-rock to near-ambient mood music, they’re scattered across that range: Paul Brill’s genre-expanding take on Americana, Natacha Atlas doing the same for world music (and sounding entirely different), Northern State (a clever and disarmingly low-fi distaff Beastie Boys), two cuts from a compilation for a record label helmed by a member of the Cocteau Twins (including the title track above) and an a capella cover of a Pixies song on TV On The Radio’s debut EP, so new-sounding and exceptional I wasn’t surprised by the mass-acclaim their second LP Return To Cookie Mountain received three years later.

True to titular form, there’s a loose and fairly obvious summer theme going on here. My favorite section is the last five songs—“You Had Time” sets the pensive, reflective mood (much better than the other DiFranco selection, anyway) and Jeff Buckley’s dreamy, ethereal cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (which I listened to about 100 times that summer) runs with it, sustained by another old-school Stuart Murdoch reverie. Somehow, the contrasting tones of Shelley Duvall and Tunde Adebimpe just fit right in. I often cringe at mixes I made decades ago, but at least the last quarter of this one hit nicely when I revisited it a few weeks back, walking under the overgrow trees of the Commonwealth Mall on an idyllic mid-summer late afternoon.

Haunted Jukebox Mix #6: Feels Like Summer (2003)

Mix: Suffocated Love

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In midsummer, as the humidity surfaces like a dense soup infiltrating all in its wake, I turn to music that’s languorous and laid back but not prosaic or aural wallpaper. In the mid-90’s, a genre dubbed “Trip-Hop” pleasantly attained this sweet spot: bands such as Massive Attack, Morcheeba, Portishead and the lesser-known-but-just-as-worthy Mono all blended loping beats and samples with chill female vocals into tunes like intoxicating smoothies that at best transcended the “mood/bedroom music for stoners” tag that was often bestowed upon them.

This is not entirely a trip-hop mix despite its title coming from a track off of what remains arguably the genre’s furthest-reaching masterpiece, Tricky’s Maxinquaye (1995). Actually, it began as an overview of modern-day songs in the same spirit (if not quite sound): Lana Del Rey’s groove earworm “Peppers”, The Clientele’s incorporation of breakbeats into their ever-distinct chamber pop, vibrant new songs from artists who were there in the 90’s (an evocative highlight of Everything But The Girl’s reunion album Fuse; Slowdive’s first single from their forthcoming release.) Then, Christine and the Queens’ “Tears Can Be So Soft” ended up successfully emulating/updating that sound, so it was no short leap to include stuff from both eras (among others.)

Since trip-hop could be such a nebulous genre, some songs that don’t really fit there still find their place here. “Love Nobody”, indie singer Jenn Champion’s collab with electropop artist Oyster Kids is a track I rediscovered after saving it to an ongoing folder of new music heard on my Spotify-curated “Discover Weekly” playlist two years ago—more 21st century 80’s (an accidental genre that could warrant its own mix) but an affable entry point into what follows. Speaking of the 80’s, Yacht Rock could be trip-hop’s sideway equivalent of that era, and U.S. Girls’ “Only Daedalus” and Emm Gryner’s “Loose Wig” are nothing if not 21st century yacht rock (and so Steely Dan-influenced I couldn’t help but place one of their old songs in between.) As usual, a vibe mix is more a journey than a destination (Del Rey next to Bill Withers next to Air!) even if it concludes with Stars’ Amy Millan blissfully considering the value of being here now.

Haunted Jukebox Mix #5: Suffocated Love