Mixtape 6: Late March 2005

1. Elliott Smith – Say Yes
2. Passage – The Unstrung Harp
3. Belle and Sebastian – Your Cover’s Blown
4. The Go! Team – Panther Dash
5. Why? – Women Eye, “NO.”
6. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – I See a Darkness
7. TV on the Radio – Modern Romance
8. The Shins – Eating Styes from Elephants’ Eyes
9. Guided by Voices – Queen of Cans and Jars
10. cLOUDDEAD – Apt. A, Pt. 1

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Now we're really getting into the thick of my Anticon phase. A good third of this playlist (almost) contains music from artists either on or affiliated with this label. "The Unstrung Harp" is kind of the epitome of what many see as the Anticon style: peculiar, rock-leaning rap with lots of big words and nasal vocals. But I still like it. Why? reappears here, and then reappears again (or threeappears™) as part of the illustrious cLOUDDEAD, with "Apt. A, Pt. 1" the track that I like to use to show people I can be smart and street all at once. I guess Garden State had already come out by this point, and so the idea of The Shins still somehow left a bad taste in my mouth, but there's no denying the greatness of these early songs. There's a Beach Boysiness to them, particularly "Eating Styes from Elephants' Eyes", which was among the first in the long string of effortlessly beautiful melodies that would eventually be whored out to the guy from Scrubs. Belle and Sebastian's "Your Cover's Blown" has proved to be my most controversial pick. While yeah, it's a departure from "Stars of Track and Field" and "A Century of Fakers," it still has that undeniable B&S quality where at first you're not sure if you should consider it a guilty pleasure because you get the sense that no one should really be so enormously into that melody and it gets into you so much that you try and deny it a little but then you shake your head and you say no, no, this is right, this feels right, this feels so right it can't be wrong.