Off the Grid, Underground

Hey y'all,

A good friend of the Mixtape is leaving Guelph today.  There isn't any reason to be sad.  He's not disappearing forever.  He's not evaporating into cloud or sublimating.  He'll be back.  Still though people are sad.  You can see it on their faces.  That's because saying goodbye is hard, even if it's to a ghost.  However sometimes music can encapsulate those paradoxical feelings of discovery and loss that accompany the final hugs and waves of a good friend.

This first song is called Dear Chicago by Ryan Adams.  It is 2:15 long but it is a deep, rich narrative.  Haunting: "happy and sad and back again but not crying out too much"  Everything a good song needs in less time than it takes John Bonhom to do a drum solo.

Next tune (Get me Away From Here I'm Dying) is not country, but since we here at the mixtape have been on a B&S binge I thought I'd join in the fun.  This song captures to me the beauty of the creative spirit: "Nobody writes them like they used to so it might as well be us."  Stuart Murdoch seems a lot like Brian Wilson to me (albeit better read). He can submerge saddest stories in a melody to make you forget.  "I always cry at endings."






Basia Bulat (Heart of My Own).  Beautiful. When there is so much music available I don't really take the time for courtship any more.  I tend to love it or leave it.  I love this song (actually, this whole album) for one lyric in this song: "the light in your verse and the shadow between."  This one image holds so much meaning and seems such a rich description of something meaningful.  That might be because every once in a while I fancy myself a poet.  Also, who can tell me what is more moving - Basia's voice or that violin.






I've been listening to a lot of Bright Eyes (Land Locked Blues) lately.  I don't know if I can say too much about this song that would really say anything meaningful in comparison to Oberst's lyrics except that they unfold cinematically and Gram Parson's would be proud.  May we never be landlocked. Fly if you gotta fly.







Rilo Kiley (More Adventurous).  The lead guitar sounds like it is weeping at the comedy of our lives.  Wise bastard.






This song is a hymn.  It belongs in the hearts of the people.  For god sake it should've been captured by the Lomax brothers decades ago.  You think you've heard it before but it sounds new.  I wish my mother sang me this song as a lullaby and every time I hear it my heart breaks with all the depth of feeling it can't contain.







Final song today is Rae Spoon's Off the Grid, Underground. I was walking home. It was late.  I was listening to this album.  This song came on. I thought of T.  Off the grid, underground with the queers and the good songs.  Go north young man to the edge of the land.