WARMER MIXTAPES #446 | by Marc Louis Cantone of The City And Horses
1. Teenage Fanclub | Baby Lee
Two words (one of which is hyphenated): Indie-Pop perfection. I don't know how, after 20 or so years, they're still able to take the same chord progressions and make brilliant new songs out of them. It's really astounding. Few people do it better.
2. Pulp | Bad Cover Version
I love list songs going all the way back to Cole Porter and Noel Coward (both masters at it). And this song presents a terrific list of things that were once great but have worn out their welcome. There's one line in the song that I disagree with, though. Jarvis Cocker is says that the later Tom & Jerry cartoons weren't as good because the two of them got along. I actually liked when Tom & Jerry were friends and could talk to each other without fighting. I've always thought it was sweet.
3. scaresthedaylights | Elders
Full disclosure, I played on this album but the heart and emotion (and drum machine) that make this song awesome belong to the author, Neil Lipuma. It's the kind of song you can put on loop for hours. Trust me. I have. It's off his new album, In The Throes.
4. Marlene Dietrich | Falling In Love Again
Her 1929 version from The Blue Angel sounds as modern today (to me at least) as it probably did during the fall of the gilded age. It's suggestive, coy and sexy. She was the original Nico.
5. The Clientele | I Had To Say This
This is was the first Clientele song I ever heard. I only needed to hear the first few lyrics, Nightingales all summer long beside me in my mind for me to be hooked. I love how the melody just floats around on a bed of reverb and how the drum stutters every few bars. I have fun trying to figure out the exact drum pattern and then playing along. I always miss a beat. But missing a beat seems to be my thing.
6. Noel Coward | Men About Town
A song about two skirt chasing men who, in reality, are anything but men about town. Favorite line: As we doff hats each pretty filly gives a wink at us and then looks down/For they long with all their might, for a red hot night, when they see a couple of men about town. This is all the more brilliant because it was written by a gay man, Noel Coward, and performed by himself and Gertrude Lawrence, in the mid-1930s.
7. The Exeter Popes | New Moon
Full disclosure, the drummer and co-producer of our latest album, Chuck Palmer, is a member of this band and I sometimes play guitar with them live. That said, this song, off their new album, Deep Sea Treachery, will be stuck in your ears for weeks. Don't believe me? Go ahead. Try it.
8. Trembling Blue Stars | Never Loved You More
It's hard to pick my favorite Trembling Blue Stars song. They all mean so much to me. But this is the tops. Beautiful guitar work, Field Mice harmonica and a vocal delivery that will break your heart.
9. Al Wilson | Show And Tell
R&B smoothness I could never pull off. I tried putting this on when my girlfriend and I were in bed. She went to sleep. I wrote this list of songs.
10. Aberdeen | Super Sunny Summer
If they added Stupidly Hot in the title it would've been the perfect song for this particular summer. But I'll still take the super sunny vocals and shimmering guitar any stupidly hot day of the week.
+11. Kennedy James | St. Walker (Demo)
Soothing Electro Art Pop from (where else?) France.
+12. Williamsboy | Troubles
The American roots Rock band sings a universally rooted break up song.
+13. The Smiths | Well I Wonder
I've always said that if it hadn't been for the Smiths I'd probably be a successful, well-adjusted adult with a wife, a couple kids and a free will unfettered by anxiety. Or not? Well, I wonder.
+14. Galaxie 500 | When Will You Come Home
This song is the perfect companion for a boy with a crush, especially a boy in the early '90s when email and text messaging didn't exist (for us) and the only way to get in touch with a girl outside of school was by leaving a message on her parent's answering machine.
+15. The Shangri-Las | You Cheated, You Lied
I'm a sucker for girl groups. But I'm a sucker in general.
