Mixtape 12: Late June 2005

1. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth
2. LCD Soundsystem – Tribulations (Video)
3. The New Pornographers – Jackie, Dressed in Cobras
4. Spoon – Decora (Yo La Tengo cover)
5. Ugly Casanova – Hotcha Girls
6. The Mountain Goats – Dilaudid
7. R. Kelly – Ignition (Remix)
8. Ghost Mice – The Pines
9. The Arcade Fire – Cold Wind
10. Wolf Parade – Claxxon’s Lament (Frog Eyes cover)

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Could it really have been anything else? I'm as much a slave to hype as anyone, when it's warranted (which is why I've been able, for the most part, to leave The Strokes and Bloc Party well enough alone). When I listened to "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" for the first time, it was one of those indescribable moments of excitement. It wasn't even that I was enjoying the music--rather, I was looking forward to listening to it, to discovering its idiosyncracies, to memorizing its lyrics. It's the feeling that there's something worthwhile in your future. LCD Soundsystem's inclusion was prompted by seeing this song performed live. I hadn't been digging the album as much, but something about the frenetic live show made me understand what James Murphy was doing a little more. I remember that I came around, specifically, sometime during the closing seconds of "Losing My Edge". A few days after Clap Your Hands Say Yeah found its way onto the web and into our hearts, the new New Pornographers record leaked in its entirety. I don't know why I naturally gravitate to the Dan Bejar songs imediately-- they're probably the least accessible, with the most ridiculous structures and time signatures, but they've got more emotion behind them than Carl's stuff. Sometimes a little too much more emotion (Bejar could have chilled a little at some points on Your Blues). But "Jackie, Dressed in Cobras", the sequel to "Jackie" off of Mass Romantic remains, for me, the most exciting song on the record. While we're on the subject of emotional vocals, I give you "Dilaudid". John Darnielle's voice has always kind of freaked me out. I've compared him to Neko Case in that both sing so loudly that sometimes it sounds as though they're just yelling at you. Even though I've never heard a single person agree with this comparison, I'm still pretty proud of it. Here, though, Darnielle starts out calmer, and when he starts yelling (and yell he does) it makes sense. The last line ("And take the foot off of the break / for Christ's sake!") is basically a gasp, the effect no longer lying in the melody but in the nuances of his cadence (not unlike, say, "Hollaback Girl"). I kind of wish the song would cut out right there, but instead there's one last cello riff. Can't expect everything to go my way, I suppose. The R. Kelly song is on here because it's better than The Beatles. And again, while I may not have been there for the first show in Montreal, I would like to draw some attention to the fact that I got on the Wolf Parade train pretty quick.