Mixes

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

Mix: Let’s Break Out The Lancers!

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When I was young, my parents weren’t particularly fancy in regard to what they drank (at least before I got them into vodka martinis in my mid-late 20s.) After work, my dad often enjoyed a bottle of Michelob poured into the tall, narrow glass while on holidays and other special occasions, my mom favored an inexpensive table wine—most often, Lancers Rosé, a Portuguese variety which came in an opaque, slightly chunky, burgundy-colored bottle. I recall this as a ubiquitous presence in our house up through the ‘90s when I was considered old enough to imbibe along with my folks. Still, given its classic design, Lancers felt more like a 1970s remnant; I suspect it accompanied many a fondue pot or a helping of Steak Diane sautéed in an electric skillet.

This mix could provide the soundtrack for a Lancers-soaked dinner party my parents or their friends might’ve thrown in the years immediately before my birth. Roughly spanning 1967 to 1973, it conjures a comfortably bourgeoisie, non-rock (or at least soft rock) vibe—unhip, if you’re less charitable, if not positively square. Without fully lapsing into Muzak territory, some of these smooth sounds are directly from my parents’ record collection of the time: Sergio Mendes and Brasil ‘66 (crafting a magic carpet ride out of a Simon and Garfunkel folk-rock standard), The Fifth Dimension (somewhat forgotten gem “Last Night I Didn’t Get To Sleep At All”) and of course Burt Bacharach, both as a solo artist (“Pacific Coast Highway”) and on tunes written with Hal David and made famous by Dusty Springfield (“The Look of Love”), Herb Alpert (“This Guy’s In Love With You”) and Dionne Warwick (“Amanda” from The Love Machine soundtrack is a bit of a deep cut but its arrangement is Burt at his baroque best.) 

Other selections I remember hearing on the radio (in particular, Milwaukee’s still-on-the-air WMYX-FM), albeit a decade or so after their heyday include Mason Williams’ groovy symphonic rock instrumental “Classical Gas”; Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s Me” (the classiest singer-songwriter crossover hit this side of vocal-soundalike Carole King); “We’ve Only Just Begun”, arguably The Carpenters’ best, most melodically complex single (written by 1970s mascot Paul Williams); The Spinners’ syncopated-yet-still-like-buttah “I’ll Be Around”.

The title references a lyric in Peggy Lee’s novelty hit “Is That All There Is” which I do not recall hearing in my youth; other selections fit the overall vibe but were likely too quirky (Julie London’s unlikely Ohio Express cover, Minnie Riperton’s psychedelic folk hymn), obscure (Harry Nilsson pre-“Everybody’s Talkin’”, Laura Nyro’s original version of an eventual hit for The Fifth Dimension) or ephemeral (Lalo Schifrin’s soundtrack music) to encounter in the wild back then. By the mid-70s, sophistication of this sort was quickly becoming passe in pop music—Barry White’s breakthrough single “I’m Gonna Love You Just A Little More Baby” is the pivot, anticipating disco excess but not above lacing its seven-minute-long seduction suite with flutes and harpsichord. It’s placed near the end of this mix, late in the evening after the Lancers ran out with a mysterious glass bowl of all the guests’ keyrings perhaps surfacing (though not at one of my parents’ gatherings as far as I know.)

Haunted Jukebox Mix #4: Let’s Break Out The Lancers!

Mix: An Emm Gryner Primer

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Celebrating her latest album Business and Pleasure (which comes out this week), here’s a CD-length playlist of some of my favorite songs from Canadian singer-songwriter Emm Gryner. Despite the easy rhyme afforded by her last name, it is very much a primer—proceeding chronologically, it kicks off with two tracks from Public (1998), her third album and major label debut on Mercury Records. Had they appeared two or three years earlier, perhaps “Summerlong” or “Hello Aquarius” might’ve become modern rock radio staples; however, by then, female artists were struggling to get airplay in that format.  With that in mind and Universal Music’s acquisition of Mercury, Gryner was dropped from the label shortly after Public came out.

In the 20-odd years since, she has put out 20-odd albums and EPs via her own label, Dead Daisy Records (not to mention a stint in David Bowie’s touring band.) One-third of my selections overlap with her best-of compilation from 2012, including “Summerlong” and the regal, soaring “Almighty Love”, a track a figure no less titanic than Bono cited in a magazine article as a song he wished he had written. I’m surprised there wasn’t more crossover between the two track listings since one of Gryner’s greatest strengths is a knack for glorious, anthemic pop. “Symphonic”, “Young As The Night”, “Black-Eyed Blue Sky”, “Ciao Monday” (the last one’s from 2011’s Northern Gospel)—all of them are alternate world number one singles lifted by ringing guitars, effervescent melodies and Gryner’s endearingly bright and deeply emotive voice.

She’s such a talented, underheard songwriter that I was only going to include her own compositions, but it wouldn’t be fully representative to not highlight her interpretative skills. I first heard of her via Girl Versions (2001) a set of stripped-down covers of songs originally popularized by men including her radical reworking of Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” (which at the time received ample airplay on WERS, a college radio station in Boston.) Later, she recorded Songs of Love and Death (2005), another covers collection, this time of Irish artists in tribute to her paternal heritage (her mother’s family is Filipino)—likely what tipped Bono off to her. It’s represented here by a gorgeous version of “Forget Georgia” originally by late 80s/early 90s Dublin outfit Something Happens. There’s also She’s Gone, a 2012 EP of Hall and Oates covers, of which the title track (a lovingly chill rendition that gets bonus points for not changing the lyrics to “He’s Gone”) is a highlight.

In recent years, she’s moved from spare balladry (“The Race”) to heavenly psych-pop (“Imagination”) to even fist-pumping EDM (how does “All The Love All The Time” only have 2K streams on Spotify?) Appearing after an extended hiatus, “Valencia”, the lead single from Business and Pleasure makes good on Gryner’s aim to craft a yacht-rock record complete with a Doobie Brothers bounce and horns sympathetic to those on Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blues”. Fortunately, it’s not a simulation or a pastiche, just a sincere, finely honed tune brimming with personality and hooks for days like any other track on this playlist.

Haunted Jukebox Mix #3: An Emm Gryner Primer

Mix: Nothing Left To Lose

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No overarching theme here, just some songs I’ve been listening to lately that are split nearly evenly between old and new. Most mixes I’ve made for other people tend to follow this non-format with selections I think they’d like to hear; this one, however, is for me.

Much of the new-ish stuff has a retro-disco tint that is always welcome; we’re so many decades past the “disco sucks” era (it arguably vanished once Deee-Lite’s “Groove Is In The Heart” hit in 1990) that such a notion now looks not only misinformed but positively quaint. Not that it’s suddenly fashionable, give or take a Dua Lipa or Lady Gaga, but just the idea of wistful, joyous, throw-all-caution-to-the-wind dance music endures whether it’s an unlikely duet between Carly Rae Jepsen and Rufus Wainwright, a kaleidoscopic anthem from former Savage Garden vocalist Darren Hayes, or an unlikely but euphoric ode to formalwear from U.S. Girls’ just-released album Bless This Mess. A choice cut from Pet Shop Boys’ best LP of the 21st century, 2013’s Electric, fits right in with these glitterball newbies.

And yet, I reiterate this isn’t a thematic mix since most of the other new songs aren’t danceable at all. Former Go-Betweens member Robert Forster takes stock of a thirty-year relationship and the profound meaning it has given his life, Yves Tumor crafts an itchy, rhythmic, onomatopoetic earworm, the onomatopoetically named beabadoobee pays inspired tribute to a similarly-titled classic by The Cure and The National ascends towards dad-rock heaven on their latest (and maybe best?) single. Listen as they all complement older tunes such as Blossom Dearie elegantly essaying another standard, Richard and Linda Thompson exhibiting fine defiance and drollness and Sky Ferreira constructing 21st century 1980s music out of such time-honored tools as melody and urgency.

The new song that kicks the mix off and gives it a title is a musical reunion for a duo who has recorded separately since the year 2000. I always wondered if Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt would ever work together again since they’ve remained a couple all this time; the first released track from the forthcoming album Fuse seems to almost pick up where they left off on 1999’s Temperamental with its electronic fervor, chill breakbeats and Thorn’s diva-like croon. But she sounds intriguingly deeper and wearier than she did just five years ago on her own great Record. “Kiss me while the world decays / Kiss me while the music plays” she repeats near the end and for sure, Everything But The Girl are firmly standing in 2023.

Haunted Jukebox Mix #2: Nothing Left To Lose

Mix: Cold Comfort

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In an effort to live up to this blog’s name, I plan on posting a new mix/playlist at least once a month going forward. Some will have a theme of sorts, others will be centered around one artist (or perhaps a related group of them) and a few will have no connecting thread at all and consist of new and old songs that I’m into at the present moment.

I’m kicking off this series with a thematic mix mostly culled from an ongoing playlist I keep of songs I want to listen to when it’s cold outside—scratch that, when the temperature dips below freezing, the sun occasionally peeks out through the terminal gray skies and all feels blustery and raw, an invitation to sit by the fireplace with a mug of hot tea (or perhaps a glass of cognac.) When linked together, the words “cold” and “comfort” bring to mind a stark contrast between the outside world and refuge taken from it indoors.

To find solace in this bleak midwinter, I often turn to (mostly) acoustic folk-pop. The first three tracks here come from late ‘60s/early ‘70s UK-based artists in reverse order of renown—I’d likely be unfamiliar Scot Bert Jansch if not for his inclusion on The Squid and The Whale soundtrack nearly two decades ago. I could’ve made an entire playlist of such likeminded folk (in both senses), but although they did this sort of stuff very well (Fairport Convention’s Sandy Denny had an exquisite, peerless voice), that doesn’t mean Americans weren’t up to the task decades later. Sufjan Stevens, for instance, has sustained a career by defying expectations from album to album but he’s arguably never matched the stripped-down intimacy of Seven Swans (2004) and its guitar-and-vocal instant standard “To Be Alone With You”.

Most of these songs are defined by their sparse instrumentation, calm sense of wonder and general quietude. After a while, amidst an excess of acoustic guitar, other elements emerge and gain power they wouldn’t necessarily retain in isolation: the dwindling piano riff on Kings of Convenience’s “Riot On An Empty Street”, the disarming fiddle laced throughout Grant McLennan’s “Hot Water”, the harmonica adding texture to Saint Etienne’s “Former Lover”. Even when things briefly turn electric, as on Nicole Atkins’ “If I Could”, its restraint and tone is enough to sit alongside purer, acoustic-guitar-and-voice selections such as Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins’ fable-like “Rabbit Fur Coat”, Rufus Wainwright’s campfire sing-along cover of his father Loudon Wainwright III’s “One Man Guy” and Concrete Blonde’s plaintive but effective “Make Me Cry”.

I also can’t help but place a classic hit everyone knows like Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” or even the Beatles’ “I’ll Be Back” (note that vaguely sinister guitar hook) next to a relatively more obscure and recent number like Belle and Sebastian’s “Piazza, New York Catcher”; together, they show how, through the decades, music (and folk music, in particular) may evolve but also evoke an ongoing tradition that, no matter what adjustments or mutations occur is as recognizable and heartening as a sliver of sun during a cold snap.

Haunted Jukebox Mix #1: Cold Comfort