WARMER MIXTAPES #245 | by Scott Churchman

1. Chet Baker | The Thrill Is Gone (Rudy Vallée And His Connecticut Yankees Cover)
I don't think this needs a story, just go and listen to this song. The pinnacle.

2. Nomfundo Sarah Msomi | Certainty
Sometimes people move away, but you can put them on and then they are sitting right there in front of you hiding behind your speakers and they are just like you remember them.

3. Pants Yell! | Song For Architects
This was never him to me. This came at the perfect and hardest time. I remember getting two copies and giving them to two different people.

4. Loudon Wainwright III | Dreaming
This song comes in handy quite often. When you're in the giving up sort of mood you can lie down and listen to this and it doesn't lie to you, it tells you everything you want to hear.

5. Townes Van Zandt | Nothin'
It doesn't matter what he sings, you can tell he feels it and you can too. Another song that feels good to give up to.

6. Jim Murray Singers | Cool Water
Summers get hot and the best music comes from generic Country And Western All Time Hits records you find at thrift shops. The kind that don't even have band names on the front. This version is better than Johnny Cash or anyone else who has ever sung this song. I imagine that it must have been hot while they were recording this.

7. Dave Bixby | Drug Song
A friend gave me a CD of something and then some other album after it. This was that other album and I lied awake in bed as the whole album played til the end.

8. Telepathy | Happiness
I swear it only happened once but that's not what's important here. He sings and you can feel it is all that matters. This song is tangible. It'll send a shiver up your spine.

9. Smog | Blood Red Bird
Very rarely you'll hear an album or a song and swear that it was the exact thing you've been looking for, for a long, long time. I remember the first couple times I heard him say moonlight on a black garden of thorns it would tear me up and make me cringe.

10. R.E.M. | Star Me Kitten
I got this tape in 2nd grade and I hated this song. I would fast-forward it. I don't know when that changed but I do remember my mom ripping the album cover in half as a punishment for something.