2008 year-end mix

[heather]

For anyone who might be interested, here's my year-end mix. Volume one is two songs from my top 10 albums and volume two is one song from the next 22 favorite albums. I should warn you, there is a fair amount of roots music on it though (country, bluegrass, americana, etc.).

THE BEST http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YGPIPM2E

1. Pop Lie - Okkervil River
2. Reasons Not To Be An Idiot - Frank Turner
3. Love Ire & Song - Frank Turner
4. People C'mon - Delta Spirit
5. Trashcan - Delta Spirit
6. I Don't Always Know What You're Saying - Ladyhawk
7. Fear - Ladyhawk
8. The Snow Leopard - Shearwater
9. On The Death Of The Waters - Shearwater
10. Damn Me - Otis Gibbs
11. Ain't Nothin Special - Otis Gibbs
12. This Land Is Our Land Redux - Slim Cessna’s Auto Club
13. Everyone Is Guilty #2 - Slim Cessna's Auto Club
14. Iowalta Morningside - Twilight Hotel
15. Sand In Your Eyes - Twilight Hotel
16. Semaphore - James
17. Waterfall - James
18. In My Arms - Teddy Thompson
19. Slippery Slope - Teddy Thompson
20. Bruce Wayne Campbell ... - Okkervil River


THE REST http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8L8G7Q92

1. On A Saturday - Herman Düne
2. Fight Fire With Fire - Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
3. Story Of The Grandson Of Jesus - Cloud Cult
4. We Couldn’t Tell - Lonesome River Band
5. What Do You Do When You're Lonesome - Justin Townes Earle
6. Death Take Your Fiddle - Spiritualized
7. Down On The Ground - British Sea Power
8. I Got Ideas - The Whigs
9. Hey Clown - Firewater
10. Garden Suite - Have Gun, Will Travel
11. Make Her Fall In Love With Me Song - George Strait
12. It Came Out Of The Wilderness - Pete Molinari
13. The Sound Of Life - The Coal Porters
14. Swashbuckler Blues - The Theater Fire
15. Army Of Ancients - Dr. Dog
16. Suffering Jukebox - Silver Jews
17. Today's Lesson - Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
18. Fire In The Western World - The Dirtbombs
19. Lost In The Light - The Heavenly States
20. Good Days Bad Days - Kaiser Chiefs
21. My Cousin - Frida Hyvönen
22. I Keep Faith (solo) - Billy Bragg

[Christel]

Interesting lists, Heather. Thanks!

Teddy and Delta Spirit are also on my tops of 2008 list (both for the albums and in performance). Highly recommended...

[heather]

And just to be clear, they're in order of flow not preference.

Teddy was among my 10 favorite concerts of 2008 until I saw The Flat Five in December and he got bumped. Fantastic. I saw Delta Spirit, but can't remember the show. I don't know if that speaks to them or whatever I had going on at the time (or just my really bad memory), but I'll be seeing them again in February and I know their music better now than I did then.

[beamish]

How appropriate, this year I decided in lieu of New Year's cards to send out a 2008 year-end mix to close friends and family. These are all songs by artists I was lucky enough to see perform live in 2008. Not all are songs they sang at the shows, or songs off their latest albums, but I did try to get a very subtle theme in there of the transcendent moments when you see someone live, so I bookended it with two songs (by two of my very favorite artists) that speak to the joy of the live concert from the performer's point of view, and then I tried to get as many live tracks on there as I had. Two of them (Vampire Weekend and Ingrid Michaelson) were from concerts I actually attended, so that was pretty cool. Here's my list:

Volume 1

Unless It's Kicks (Okkervil River)
Mistress Mabel (The Fratellis)
100 Days, 100 Nights (Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings)
Hey Eugene (China Forbes)
Through the Morning, Through the Night (Robert Plant and Alison Krauss)
Charlie Darwin (The Low Anthem)
I'm in Love [But Not With You] (Rogue's March/Joe Hurley)
My Hero [Live] (Foo Fighters)
National Anthem [Live] (Radiohead)
Fireflies (Rhett Miller and Rachael Yamagata)
Marry Song (Band of Horses)
I'm Gonna Get There (Mike Farris)
The Underdog (Spooooooooooooooooooon)
All These Things That I've Done (The Killers)

Volume 2
Sausalito (Conor Oberst)
Here's to the Halcyon (Old 97's)
Ain't Got So Far To Go (David Byrne)
Tables and Chairs (Andrew Bird)
When Your Mind's Made Up (The Swell Season)
Jerry Falwell Destroyed Earth (Ben Kweller)
Down in the Flood (The Derek Trucks Band)
Mistadobalina (Del Tha Funkee Homosapien)
The Re-Arranger (Mates of State)
That Summer Feeling (Jonathan Richman)
One (Blake's Got a New Face) [Live] (Vampire Weekend)
Winter (Joshua Radin)
The Chain [Live From Webster Hall] (Ingrid Michaelson)
Song for the Road (David Ford)

Not a bad year.

[suzanne78704]

Thanks for your year-end mix, Heather, some great choices there and some discoveries for me, too.

I love, love, love Teddy Thompson! I got to see Teddy at the Cactus Cafe a couple years ago with about 50 people. He had written song titles on little slips of paper and put them in a plastic cup. He walked around with a plastic cup and had audience members draw a selection. I met his dad back in the day at a radio station and was privileged to be in the studio with him while being interviewed and played live.