Wednesday, July 30, 2008

KINGS OF LEON/PICTURES AND SOUND

Hey kids, you've gotta grab this: http://www.kingsofleon.com/spin_crawlfreedownload/

...and watch this two-part, artist-made EPK on imeem (http://www.imeem.com/picturesandsound/video/) or YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/PicsAndSound).

Interestingly, both Pictures And Sound (8/19, Vanguard) and the Followill boys' new Only by the Night (9/23, RCA) were co-produced, engineered and mixed by Jacquire King. These two records are gonna look real good on his discography.

Friday, July 11, 2008

REVIEWS OF GOOD 2008 ALBUMS

All but one of these reviews ran in Uncut, some of them in slightly different (read: more compressed) form. The one exception is The Bridges, from Paste.

THE EXPLORERS CLUB
Freedom Wind
Dead Oceans
Surf’s up again on a fully tubular Wilsonian tour de force


Hailing from the wrong coast, the Charleston, S.C.-based Explorers Club have done the near-impossible, turning an obsession with everything Beach Boys into an uncannily nuanced and utterly beguiling smart-pop album. The band’s sweet spot is the Sunflower-Holland era, meaning there’s as much Carl and Dennis as Brian. The LP opens with a reverb-drenched wall-of-sound beat, introducing the instant classic “Forever”, with its creamy four-part harmonies swaying like palm trees. The following “Honey, I Don’t Know Why” filters Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue through Big Star’s #1 Record, while “Lost My Head” sails right into Holland’s harbor. It’s a toss-up whether Jason Brewer’s classically crafted songs or the spot-on arrangements are more irresistible, as the group recasts these magical sounds for the 21st century.

ROBIN DANAR
Altered States
Shanachie
Tasty arrangements, inspired pairings make for an inviting covers record


Taking a cue from Mark Ronson, producer Robin Danar has matched a bunch of indie-pedigreed vocalists with a dozen classic songs of his choosing, frequently finding something fresh in the familiar. The long-time CBGB soundman has more recently been involved with influential L.A. public radio station KCRW, the only local outlet for singers like Rachael Yamagata, who does a shimmering take on the Stones’ “10,000 Light Years From Home”; Inara George, who channels Patsy Cline on the Johnny Mathis standard “Chances Are”; and Jim Bianco (who chillingly updates Talking Heads’ “Life During Wartime”). The buoyant centerpiece pairs the Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan with the Pretenders’ “Message of Love”, and it’s a kick to hear him croon lines like “Oh, it’s good, good, good, like Brigitte Bardot.” But the most infectious track is the lone original, “Yell,” as newcomer Jesca Hoop unfurls layers of sensual vocals over Danar’s loping laptop groove.

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
Narrow Stairs
Atlantic
Indie stalwarts set the controls for the heart of the sun

Like the Shins with 2007’s sonically elaborate Wincing The Night Away, their Pacific Northwest neighbors in Death Cab are raising the stakes and leaving the limiting indie aesthetic – and quite possibly their indier-than-thou core fans – behind. The Seattle band’s sixth LP, and second recorded for a major label, extends the soundscape to IMAX proportions and tamps down Death Cab’s vaunted pop formalism, introducing open-structured pieces and unorthodox tonalities. “Bixby Canyon Bridge” unfolds with outright grandeur, sectioned out like a pocket symphony, and “I Will Possess Your Heart” rides a swelling, keyboard-driven groove for nearly five bracing minutes before the entrance of Ben Gibbard’s troubled angel’s voice, while the raga feel of “Pity and Fear” resolves with brutal power chords. This is the sound of a band surprising itself.

THE BRIDGES

Limits of the Sky
Verve
Southeast meets SoCal on family band’s delightful debut

Like Kings of Leon, Alabama’s Bridges are a family band — four siblings and a cousin — whose upbringing was dominated by music and religion. But four of these kids, aged 18 to 24, are female, with cousin Brittany Painter providing the lyrics, which are filled with natural imagery, and impactful lead vocals, Natalie Byrd sharing the foreground with her piano and the three Byrd sisters providing the ever-present three-part harmonies. Surprisingly, given their rural southern origins, the Bridges have cooked up a sound that’s rooted in the balmy West Coast folk rock of the Mamas & the Papas, Fleetwood Mac and the Bangles (nonetheless, they obviously couldn’t call themselves the Byrds). Their blend of emotional innocence and musical sophistication is underscored by the production of bona fide West Coast folk rocker Matthew Sweet and the evocative pedal steel and guitar lines of the brilliant L.A.-based sideman Greg Leisz. The chiming instrumental work spotlights the Byrd girls’ billowing harmonies as they alternately surround and counterpoint Painter’s accomplished leads. Lilting opener “All the Words” hits the choruses like a wave breaking against the rocks of Big Sur, “Pieces” climbs to an emphatic chorus payoff, only to rise to an even bigger crescendo and “Echo” features stunningly sophisticated multipart vocal interplay buoyed by Leisz’s pillowy pedal steel while “Under the Sun” goes for—and attains—a symphonic grandeur. Throughout, the group’s melodiousness is matched by something just as disarming—the complete absence of irony or cynicism.

RON SEXSMITH
Exit Strategy of the Soul
Yep Roc
Without warning, the veteran artist breaks out what he calls “shadow gospel”


Tracked in London by Swedish producer Martin Terefe, with horns and percussion overbubbed in Havana, Canadian Sexsmith’s ninth album sounds like it was made in Memphis. While not as immediate a grabber as the Beatlesque, Terefe-produced Retriever from 2004, the new LP gradually casts a powerful spell, as the previously introspective songsmith reaches for the metaphysical, his piano playing bringing a gospel-like fervor to the humanistic material while providing a gritty contrast to his silky, sliding vocals. “This Is How I Know” is as close as Sexsmith is likely to get to “Let It Be,” and on the gliding groove of “Brighter Still,” his subtle soulfulness evokes no less than Bill Withers.

GREG LASWELL
Three Flights From Alto Nido
Vanguard
Modern-day studio hermit fashions a digital Something/Anything?

As a multi-instrumentalist with a command of the digital studio, SoCal singer-songwriter Laswell has a limitless palate to work with. He puts it to full use on the follow-up to his 2006 breakup album Through Toledo, whose withering anguish was offset by elegant soundscapes. The new LP is even more expansive – and upbeat – with settings that sometimes seem to emanate from a full orchestra rather than one guy tinkering in a garage. “I’d Be Lying” sports a celestial choir of multitracked contrapuntal vocals a la Elbow, and “Days Go On” fires up a high-revving digi-groove worthy of Hot Chip, putting Laswell in the thick of today’s high-tech version of knob twiddling.

FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS
Flight of the Conchords
Sub Pop
Kiwi duo’s debut LP sports filled-out versions of songs from their HBO series

It’s safe to say that this is the most endlessly playable comedy album of the millennium. Multi-instrumentalist Bret McKenzie possesses a musical gift commensurate with his comedic talent, while he and Jemaine Clement may be the best blue-eyed soul singers since Hall & Oates – no kidding. The third team member is producer/programmer Mickey Petralia (Beck, Ladytron), whose command of ’80s synth-pop kitsch enables the Conchords to satirize in minute detail everything from the Pet Shop Boys (the sublime “Inner City Pressure”) and What’s Goin’ On (“Think About It”) to Bowie (“Bowie”). The LP serves as a reminder that “funny” and “funky” are only one character apart.

JAKOB DYLAN
Seeing Things
Columbia
At 38, the younger Dylan dares to enter the acoustic folk realm once ruled by his father

Stepping out from the protection of the Wallflowers, Dylan has turned to producer Rick Rubin, and together they’ve made an austere acoustic album that could’ve been titled American Recordings VI. The source material for these newly penned songs appears to be Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, which once inspired Dad. The themes are traditional – the working man’s lot (“All Day And All Night”), conjugal devotion (“Up on the Mountain”), the sense of belonging to a place (“Will It Grow”) and, inevitably, life during wartime (“Evil Is Alive And Well,” “I Told You I Couldn’t Stop,” “War Is Kind”). The tone turns revealingly personal on the closing “Other End of the Telescope,” an overtly autobiographical contemplation in which the younger Dylan for the first time addresses his unique place in the universe. It ends with these provocative lines: “I see clear at last, I love, I loathe/On this end of the telescope.”

OLD 97’S
Blame It on Gravity
New West
A literate, unpretentious and rockin’ outing from first-gen alt-country survivors

Over 14 years and now seven studio albums, the Dallas-based Old 97’s have made a strong case for themselves as the latter-day American equivalent of Rockpile. Their latest is a stylistic grab bag of revved-up folk rock (“The Fool” sounds like the Byrds with Keith Moon on drums), Crazy Horse-style excursions (the galloping “Ride”), and country (the Dylan-meets-Cash hot-rod two-step “No Baby I,” the powerful and beautiful “Color of a Lonely Heart Is Blue”). The tracks explode with immediacy, as Rhett Miller’s detail-rich narratives mesh with the knowingness of his singing and the players’ tight grip on the material to reveal a first-rate band in peak form.

STEVE WINWOOD
Nine Lives
Columbia
Have Faith! Stevie reaches back for the real nitty-gritty

At 60, Steve Winwood remains one of Ray Charles’ most skillful disciples, his innate soulfulness bleeding into every note he sings and plays – as long as he’s feeling it, that is. Happily, the spirit is within Winwood for much of the 10th album bearing his name. Nine Lives revisits the jam-based work of Traffic rather than his refined ’80s synth-o-ramas, and that’s good news, because Winwood remains at his most compelling in immediate settings, while his primal presence tends to be tamped down within rigid structures.

After the palate-cleansing opener, “I’m Not Drowning,” a sprightly country blues solo piece consisting of little more than a circular guitar figure and that unmistakable, tree-bark-textured voice set against clicking drumsticks, the album proceeds to introduce its elemental extremes of air (the chilled-out excursion “Fly”) and earth (“Raging Sea,” with its British-blues-rooted chunkiness).

The Moment We’ve Been Waiting For Arrives with the spine-tingling snarl of an overdriven guitar, signaling the presence of the Lord – a.k.a. Eric Clapton. Right from the top, the master’s riffage cascades like molten lava, and Winwood rises up to meet his old mate’s fire with the churning of a massive, force-of-nature organ and a ferocious vocal, as the track reaches for, and achieves, Blind Faith godhead in its roiling payoff. It’s safe to say that neither of these guys has sounded so fully in the moment for at least a couple of decades.

The second half is lifted by the elegantly funky “We’re All Looking” (think AWB) and the vibe-y, Traffic-meets-Santana groover “Secrets,” as Winwood leans on the keys of his trusty Hammond B3 and pumps the keyboard bass while Paul Booth trills the Chris Wood-like flute embellishments. By contrast, the world-beat-flavored “Hungry Man” and “At Times We Do Forget” feel earnest but overly considered. The closing “Other Shore” is a more satisfying expression of spiritual yearning that resembles the less cranky side of latter-day Van Morrison, right down to Booth’s contemplative sax solo.

As reassuring as Nine Lives will be to longtime Winwood fans, it’s bound to leave them wanting more – like a full album of Winwood-Clapton interplay.

THE DOORS
Live in Pittsburgh 1970
Bright Midnight/Rhino
Turn on, tune in, play loud

The Doors camp has long held that the band’s May 2, 1970, show at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena was the tightest performance of its extensively recorded final tour, as the wildly erratic Jim Morrison showed up that night neither remote nor out of it but clear and focused. Following the replacement of a pair of long-missing sections by original engineer Bruce Botnick, this storied set can finally be heard, and absorbing it purely as an aural experience is, as they used to say, a trip.

This is music intended inspire a trance-like state – though it helps if the audience is already zoned-out to begin with (a given in this case) – and right from the opening “Back Door Man,” the three players cast their spell. The extended vamps unfurl in strikingly stark and eerie patterns, bringing to mind the otherworldly churn of Portishead, albeit with a human pulse; sometimes minutes go by with little more happening than a relentlessly regular drum-and-keyboard-bass groove from John Densmore and Ray Manzarek. These narcotic grooves propel surreal excursions like “Roadhouse Blues,” “Mystery Train” and “When the Music’s Over,” full of subtle variations in mood, rhythmic emphasis and dynamic intensity, as the band moves seamlessly between arranged and improvised sections.

In a committed performance as shaman/ringmaster, Morrison shape-shifts between a theatricality that’s practically Shakespearean in its declamation and his version of method acting. He speaks in tongues in the breakdown of “Roadhouse Blues,” while spontaneously working in bits of other songs during the stretched-out segments, keeping the bandmembers on their toes – but then, going with the flow is their strength. Morrison’s acuity allows guitarist Robbie Krieger to shine in his role as the echo in a call-and-response dialogue with the singer, using his trusty Gibson SG to capture the cadences and tonalities of the sounds Morrison emits, with Manzarek’s organ underscoring the interaction in the intoxicating payoffs. Throughout the set, the band masterfully conjures up the dusky atmospheres that enable the frontman to beguile and intimidate.

It’s safe to say that Live in Pittsburgh is the first Doors live album that captures the band at its spellbinding peak. From this point forward, no longer will Boomer need to explain, “You had to be there.”

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

PICTURES AND SOUND: MY FIND OF THE HALF-YEAR

I typically bang out two or three bios a month, and most of my subjects turn out to have interesting stories, which I treat little differently than magazine profiles. But rarely do I fall totally in love with a record that comes to me through a bio assignment. That's what happened last month with Pictures And Sound (bandleader Luke Reynolds insists on calitalizing the "A" in "And"), so much so that I wrote the most personal bio ever, and did do under my own name, which is something I almost never do. Here it is.

As a music journalist, you live for that moment when you put on a record by some group you never heard of and it blows you away before Track One hits the first chorus. That’s what happened to me the other day with the self-titled first album from Pictures And Sound. The first cut, “Everything Leaves A Mark,” hooked me from the opening riff, and the aerodynamic groove of the next one, “The Last Ocean,” lifted me right out of my chair. Before I knew it, I’d zipped through the whole damn album, and I never do that anymore—not with 15,000 tracks a click away in my iTunes library.

Not only have I been playing Pictures And Sound compulsively ever since, I’ve been waking up every morning with one or another of these songs in my head. The closest parallel I can come up with is the feeling of excitement that coursed through me the first time I heard Spoon’s Kill the Moonlight, Arcade Fire’s Funeral and Kings of Leon’s Because of the Times, in each case realizing, as soon as I’d gotten over my initial shock, that I’d happened upon an record destined for my year-end top 10.

The spaces are as important as the sounds on Pictures And Sound, which is almost binary in its focus—you won’t hear a syllable, note or drum hit that isn’t purposeful, that doesn’t bring something to the whole. That applies to both subject matter and groove because, like the best rock, these tracks engage the mind and body all at once. The vocals convey rhythm and as well as melody and lyrics, and certain lines seem emblazoned in neon. Lines like: “I’ve thought of you from a hundred different directions/And none of them are right” (“100 Directions”), “It feels like everything’s about to change” (“Big Screen”) and “It’s you I love, not just the thought of you” (“It’s You”). Then there’s “Every War,” as powerful a topical song as this tumultuous decade has produced; the fact that the great Willie Nelson duets and plays a signature guitar solo on it doesn’t hurt, either. This record is smart, visceral and immediate, and every moment of it rings true.

Eager for info, I did the drill, Googling the band name, which took me to Pictures And Sound’s MySpace page. There I discovered that the band is the brainchild of writer/singer/multi-instrumentalist Luke Reynolds, the former leader of Blue Merle, who put out one intriguing album on Island in 2005. I was further intrigued when I read his list of influences: “A collective love of art, painting, dub, the woods, deep winter, vintage hoodies, old keyboards, pedal steel, snowboarding, coffee, Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rainer Maria Rilke, Neruda, Barry Lopez, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Abbey, Blind Willie Johnson, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Steve Reich, James Gadson.” Now, how particular is that?

I also discovered the band is a trio, with bassist Dave Wilder (Liz Phair, Ghostface Killah, Macy Gray) and drummer Pete McNeal (Jem, Cake, Rickie Lee Jones), both based in L.A. Jacquire King (Modest Mouse, Tom Waits, Kings of Leon) produced, engineered and mixed the album at various studios in Nashville, where he (as well as Reynolds, sporadically throughout the year) reside.

Then I got Luke on the phone from Vermont, where he was visiting his mom and dad. Up front, he described himself as “a real high-energy person,” and the lively ensuing conversation bore that out and then some. Turns out the 29-year-old artist is a fifth-generation Vermonter, and the 10 songs that wound up on the album have been culled from an outpouring of 115 pieces written in a sustained run of inspiration over the course of two and a half years.

A chunk of it went down during the summer and fall of 2006, following the breakup of Blue Merle. Seeking the most inspiring environment he could think of as the setting for his creative process, Reynolds left Nashville and headed north into the Vermont woods with a truckload of instruments, recording gear and a bunch of “visual records” for inspiration, including Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. For five months, he slept in a tent on a mountainside above a 19th century grain mill, turning the basement into a makeshift studio—essentially doing a modern-day version of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond retreat (Reynolds is big on the New England Pantheists). Out of that initial woodshedding came two keepers, “Every War” and “Big Screen,” along with an exponential increase in focus and discipline.

“Big Screen,” featuring his mystic pedal steel over a rolling-gaited groove, considers the parallels this artist and filmmaker finds between sounds and visuals. “I often watch snow, skate and surf films for inspiration,” he says, “just as I listen to music when I’m snowboarding. Or when I’d take breaks from the grain mill to go to the skateboard park and listen to music to see how it affected my moods. I watch for inspiration; this music is very visual.”

Which leads us to the name of the band or, more precisely, the concept. “I wanted the opportunity to reinvent myself over and over again, and it was freeing to work under a different name,” Reynolds explains.

When it got too cold to live in the tent, Reynolds went on the road, opening for the North Mississippi Allstars. He spent the winter near the Canadian border, teaching music and painting to kids with learning disabilities. He continued the writing process while traveling around the U.S. and Europe, heading to L.A. every six months to work up new material with McNeal and Wilder, whom he describes as “my tight, tight, tight friends, who made the music richer and wider.”

Reynolds conceived “100 Directions” in Barcelona after visiting the Picasso Museum and having an epiphany while gazing at the works of one of his favorite artists. “It all came together for me in the Cubist exhibit,” he recalls. “I was hit over the head by the realization that there are ways, at least on canvas, to simultaneously view a subject from multiple perspectives in order to get a more accurate read on it. And in order to make sense of anything, really, we have to look at it from all angles, because to look at just one doesn’t do justice to it at all. This song came out of that insight.”

Of “Everything Leaves a Mark,” which came to him in Austin, Reynolds says, “One recurring sentiment throughout the album is how everything we choose to touch, ingest, taste and do leaves its mark on us. The people we choose to surround ourselves with are an example of that.”

“The Last Ocean,” inspired in Seattle, “poses the question, would knowing that something were the very first or very last of its kind change the way we choose to interact with it,” says Reynolds, “and what obligation comes with that knowledge?” The track clocks in at a blistering 2:16. “I wanted to play this groove for a really long time,” he adds. “After we recorded it, the vocal felt really off the cuff when I first listened back to it, just kind of spit out, and I’m really glad we kept it. The attitude reminds me of a lot of records I love that have left their mark on me.”

Reynolds had earmarked the gospel-tinged “Forever to Reach,” written in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as “the centerpiece of the album before we started recording. But now I see it as a part of the whole. It fits in with ‘The Last Ocean,’ ‘Every War’ and ‘The Youth.’ Pete and Dave’s grooves had a huge impact on this track. The final rewrite I brought with me into these sessions had a lot of drum machines on it and was very mechanical and rigid-sounding, which I liked. But we ended up tearing all of that out, because we actually found it limiting.”

“It’s You,” which has a lilting, summery feel, came out of one of Reynolds’ L.A. trips. He says it took him a week of writing to nail the payoff line, “You’re the proof I use to measure what is true.” “We all have truths that we put to use as anchors when things get drifty,” he says. “For example, I use my feelings towards Vermont as a reminder that there are places out there where I feel rooted, and that’s what I set my crosshairs on to keep me cool when I feel all over the place. I love the fact that a place like that exists and the people there exist—and furthermore, to know without a moment’s hesitation that it’s the actual place, and not some romantic notion of the place, which is important to me.”

The band and King tracked the album over two weeks in the big room at Nashville’s House of David, with Reynolds hewing to the process of intensive rewriting throughout the sessions. “Everyone has their path,” he says “and for me this time, it just took how long it did in order to get things right leading up to recording. I feel like I’ve grown a lot and will be able to execute ideas better and faster in the future. As we were recording and working through the songs, some sections which I'd previously thought of as being been the strongest part of the lyric, had to be rewritten in order to better serve the overall intent. Nothing was precious to me because I think of myself not as a singer/songwriter, but as a team player, collaborator, bandleader and bandmate all in one. So I had no problem if cutting something out made a track hotter.”

Each day during those two weeks was spent one a particular song, as the band entered the studio with no preconceived parts, trying various approaches until they hit a collective breakthrough. “There’s real energy to the tracks because they were so new,” Reynolds points out. “We were going for a sound that I call ‘raw’ and Jacquire calls ‘white hot,’ and every night there was a 40-minute window when the band was hot and on it. So what you’re hearing is the first time we got it right.”

Considering the album as a whole, Reynolds says, “I’ve been trying to write songs that are wider and looser up close but coming more into focus at different times and in different ways for different people. I love paintings like that—the Impressionist painters who left space for you to have your own relationship with the piece.”

I have my own relationship with this piece of sound painting, so for me at least, I can confirm that Reynolds and his three talented and tuned-in collaborators did their jobs. Maybe this record won’t hit you as hard as it hit me. But then again, what if it does?

Bud Scoppa
June 2008

Sunday, July 6, 2008

HALFWAY & HALF-ASSED

Some of the following LPs haven’t come out yet, there’s a bunch of highly touted records I haven’t heard, like Fleet Foxes, and I haven’t spent enough time with several of these to feel confident that they’ll be on my year-end list. So this is an inherently flawed midyear Top 12, but it’s the best I can do right now.

Coldplay, Viva La Vida
Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs
Robin Danar, Altered States
Duffy, Rockferry
The Explorer's Club, Freedom Wind
John Mellencamp, Life, Death, Love and Freedom
Mudcrutch, Mudcrutch
My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
Pictures And Sound, Pictures And Sound
The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely
Matthew Sweet, Sunshine Lies
Teddy Thompson, A Piece of What You Need

Saturday, July 5, 2008

THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY


Damn, 2008's half over already, and that means it's list time. Here are 50 tracks I keep coming back to, arranged not in a sequence (I'm working on it) but alphabetically by artist name. Some of them are recent arrivals, like Mellencamp, Teddy Thompson and Pictures and Sound (a sensational new band started by ex-Blue Merle leader Luke Reynolds). The tracks that have been road-tested during spinning sessions are in red.

Freeway, Aimee Mann (@#%&*! Smilers) 3:50
Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love, Coldplay (Viva La Vida) 6:51
Yes, Coldplay (Viva La Vida) 7:07
I Will Possess Your Heart, Death Cab for Cutie (Narrow Stairs) 8:26
No Sunlight, Death Cab for Cutie (Narrow Stairs) 2:40
Mercy, Duffy (Rockferry) 3:57
Grounds for Divorce, Elbow (The Seldom Seen Kid) 3:39
Forever, The Explorers Club (Freedom Wind) 2:33
Don’t Forget the Sun, The Explorers Club (Freedom Wind) 3:12
Lost My Head, The Explorer's Club (Freedom Wind) 2:07
Mykonos, Fleet Foxes (Sun Giant [EP]) 4:35
Inner City Pressure, Flight of the Conchords (Flight of the Conchords) 3:27
Who's Gonna Save My Soul, Gnarls Barkley (The Odd Couple) 3:18
Days Go On, Greg Laswell (Three Flights From Alto Nido) 3:15
Troubled Land, John Mellencamp (Life, Death, Love and Freedom) 3:25
Byrdgirl, Matthew Sweet (Sunshine Lies) 3:20
Sunshine Lies, Matthew Sweet (Sunshine Lies) 3:23
Electric Feel, MGMT (Oracular Spectacular) 3:50
Scare Easy, Mudcrutch (Mudcrutch) 4:36
The Wrong Thing to Do, Mudcrutch (Mudcrutch) 4:10
Evil Urges, My Morning Jacket (Evil Urges) 5:14
Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Pt. 1, My Morning Jacket (Evil Urges) 3:51
Highly Suspicious, My Morning Jacket (Evil Urges) 3:07
I'm Amazed, My Morning Jacket (Evil Urges) 4:35
See These Bones, Nada Surf (Lucky) 5:10
Whose Authority, Nada Surf (Lucky) 3:01
Everything Leaves a Mark, Pictures And Sound (Pictures And Sound) 3:10
The Last Ocean, Pictures And Sound (Pictures And Sound) 2:16
It's You, Pictures And Sound (Pictures And Sound) 3:40
100 Directions, Pictures And Sound (Pictures And Sound) 4:01
Every War, Pictures And Sound feat. Willie Nelson (Pictures And Sound) 3:27
Supernatural Superserious, R.E.M. (Accelerate) 3:24
Salute Your Solution, The Raconteurs (Consolers of the Lonely) 3:00
Old Enough, The Raconteurs (Consolers of the Lonely) 3:57
These Stones Will Shout, The Raconteurs (Consolers of the Lonely) 3:54
Yell, Robin Danar feat. Jesca Hoop (Altered States) 5:12
Message of Love, Robin Danar feat. Paul Buchanan (Altered States) 4:48
Spiritude, Ron Sexsmith (Exit Strategy of the Soul) 1:30
This Is How I Know, Ron Sexsmith (Exit Strategy of the Soul) 3:50
Brighter Still, Ron Sexsmith (Exit Strategy of the Soul) 3:41
You Don't Have To Say You Love Me, Shelby Lynne (Just a Little Lovin') 4:13
I'm Not Drowning, Steve Winwood (Nine Lives) 3:32
Raging Sea, Steve Winwood (Nine Lives) 6:18
In My Arms, Teddy Thompson (A Piece of What You Need) 3:14
Can't Sing Straight, Teddy Thompson (A Piece of What You Need) 3:43
Atoms for Peace (Four Tet Remix), Thom Yorke 5:57
Shut Up and Let Me Go, The Ting Tings (We Started Nothing) 2:52
A-Punk, Vampire Weekend (Vampire Weekend) 2:18
Pork and Beans, Weezer (Weezer, a.k.a Red Album) 3:09