WARMER MIXTAPES #1430 | by Tom Dakin (Silent Film Project), George Waite and Daniel Hopewell of The Crookes

SIDE A | by Tom Dakin

1. Milagres | The Letterbomb
I like this new direction Milagres are taking. Reckon it would sound amazing live.

2. Here We Go Magic | How Do I Know
The way this song builds up from all the little insistent parts is great. It all adds up beautifully, and there’s also a very good video to go with it which is well worth a watch.

3. POST | Monument To A Lost Cause
Quite a mysterious band, POST. All I know is that they’re from Glasgow… Or is it Manchester? Either way, this song is brilliant: I like the way the guitar riff works against the vocal.

4. Courtney Barnett | Avant Gardener
My new favourite Aussie artist, since Cloud Control have become more or less repatriated. This is simply the best song about Asthma.

5. The Dismemberment Plan | Daddy Was A Real Good Dancer
Emergency & I is one of my favourite albums ever, and I was delighted when I heard that Travis Morrison and company were returning to the fold with this latest record. This is my favourite song from it.

6. Timber Timbre | Magic Arrow
I discovered this song through its inclusion on the Breaking Bad soundtrack. I think it was used so skilfully in that programme that I had the best possible first exposure to it. Another fine example of guitar/vocal interplay. In this case, the guitar riff is so simple it’s even more impressive.

7. Wilco | I Might
I’m a huge Wilco fan, and I’m constantly amazed at how they manage to keep reinventing their sound to make each album not only fresh, but also a full-on exhibition of their total mastery of whatever new thing it is they are doing. I don’t really know what Jeff Tweedy is talking about on this tune, but it matters not.

8. Dominant Legs | Hoop Of Love
I was a big fan of Magic Bullets, and, whilst this new incarnation isn’t quite as jangly, I’m enjoying it very much, and there’s definitely a hint of Cyndi Lauper in there, which I don’t mind at all...

9. Elf Power | Paralyzed
I was a bit of a latecomer to Elf Power, and they have such a vast back catalogue I still haven’t quite got my head around it, but this song is a current fave. I bet the bass player has tired fingers after playing this one live...

10. White Rabbits | I Had It Coming
The union of White Rabbits and Britt Daniel has been a joy to listen to. This is the closer of their most recent LP, Milk Famous, so I thought it would make a good closer to this list. In a way, I wish Daniel’s style wasn’t so recognisable so I could hear the band a bit more clearly through it, but at the same time, I think it sounds incredible: The big thuddy percussion competing with the extreme detail of the rest of the track works a treat.


SIDE B | by George Waite

1. Bright Eyes | Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh
I was given a copy of Fevers And Mirrors by my friend, Loz, when I was sixteen and it was like nothing I'd heard before. The songs were ragged and Conor Oberst's voice was all over the place - all screams and whispers - but it was that fragility that drew me in. When I first heard the line and the fingers press on to the strings, yet another clumsy chord, I began to realise that good Music doesn't have to be technically perfect as long it has heart.

2. The Libertines | Up The Bracket
They were the first band I fell in Love with. Pete Doherty was my hero and me and my mates hung off his every word. We'd gather at the bottom of my road with a copy of the NME and read it cover to cover before School. I saw them perform Up The Bracket on Top Of The Tops (seems implausible now) and was transfixed. After that, I scoured the military surplus shops in Southampton for a red tunic, but never found one. When they broke up, Carl Barât said to the fans: it's your turn now, like a King abdicating the throne. That was a real call to arms for kids my age.

3. Pixies | Head On (The Jesus and Mary Chain Cover)
Pixies at Reading 2005 is still the best gig I've ever seen. I was seventeen and had bought 24 cans of Strongbow from the boot of a car that morning with my schoolmates. By the time they came on, I was in a state of adolescent, cider induced euphoria. Later that night I fell off the jetty into the Thames, losing my wallet and phone in the process, but the lyrics still resonated: and the way I feel tonight, I could die and I wouldn't mind.

4. The Crystals | He's Sure The Boy I Love
It's the perfect anthem for Love on the bread line.

He doesn't hang diamonds round my neck,
and all he's got is unemployment cheques.
He sure ain't the boy I've been dreaming of... But he's sure the boy I love
.

5. Billy Bragg | Walk Away Renee (Version) (The Left Banke's 'Walk Away Renée' Cover)
Singing about having your heart broken is not considered to be a particularly manly pursuit, but it takes a lot of bottle. I love the skeletal Motown backing and the plainness of the words - there's nowhere to hide in that arrangement. It's also a kitchen sink Love song - at first hopeful, then bitter, jealous and finally defiant: then she cut her hair and I stopped loving her. Brilliantly blunt.

6. Ron Sexsmith | One Grey Morning
You could listen to your heart, or go drown it out in a noisy bar. I believe this man is a genius. His ability to craft a melody makes me sick with jealousy and his work ethic is a real inspiration. Tom and I were lucky enough to see him play at last year's SXSW in the function room of a hotel with forty other people. We couldn't believe how empty the place was. Anyway, afterwards we shyly approached him and gave him a copy of our Bright Young Things fanzine. He was a gentleman and it was a privilege to meet him.

7. ABBA | Mamma Mia
Melodically, ABBA are untouchable. This song alone has more choruses than most bands manage in a lifetime. We play this (sometimes numerous times) when people are foolish enough to ask us to DJ, and no one can resist it. It is the purest form of Pop Music and so much fun to dance/flail wildly to.

8. Bruce Springsteen | Dancing In The Dark
This is not my favourite of his songs by any means, but it is the best to sing along to at three in the morning. The line: I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face always gets us screaming our heads off. Moreover, the number of strangers I have embraced whilst dancing to this song is incalculable.

9. The City Limits | No Regrets 
Before becoming a responsible father, my Dad was a Rock 'N' Roll singer in a band called The City Limits. They played energetic, witty Pop Music in the vein of Elvis Costello and XTC and they were fucking great. Still are. I was brought up on stories of the gigs they'd do in pubs and halls around Northern England and the fights, the characters, the bizarre stage wear (cricket whites, hawaiian shirts) and the gang bravado - all felt incredibly exciting to me as a child, and even now. My Dad's the reason I'm in a band really and this song reminds me how lucky I am to be so.

10. The Replacements | Unsatisfied
We were in a record shop in New York in fall 2013 and I heard this band on the Stereo. I immediately asked who it was and got a look of pure disgust from the girl at the counter. Er, it's The Replacements?, she said. Feeling suitably ignorant, I bought Let It Be and left sharpish. I listened to Unsatisfied throughout the making of Soapbox and it had a real impact on how I attacked some of the vocals on the record.

SIDE C | by Daniel Hopewell

1. The Beach Boys | Don’t Worry Baby
This my favourite Beach Boys song. When I listen to songs I’m struck with a certain sense of Synesthesia and see them in colours, or maybe even seasons. This song always evokes Summer for me, but there's a sadness that colours it with a slightly darker hue than most other Beach Boys songs. It makes me thing of the end of the day, just at the point when the street lamps flick on. I always feel very nostalgic listening to it.

2. Jane Monheit | Never Let Me Go (Never Let Me Go Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
This is a strange one because Judy Bridgewater is actually a fictional artist from the Ishiguro novel Never Let Me Go. They recorded this song for the movie, but it sounds incredibly timeless. It’s wonderfully cinematic and heartbreaking and comforting and everything I ever want in a song.

3. The Supremes | The Happening 
My Mother recently told me she wanted me to play this at her funeral. She said it’s impossible to be sad when you listen to it, you see? I guess I see it as a strange sort of Requiem now.

4. Gerry And The Pacemakers | You’ll Never Walk Alone (Christine Johnson Cover)
As performed by The Kop. Nothing is as powerful as an anthem performed by thousands of collective voices singing as one; for me this is the ultimate anthem and capable of inspiring the impossible. I listen to it every morning.

5. Audrey Hepburn | Moon River (Breakfast At Tiffany's Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
The lyric Two drifters off to see the World, there’s such a lot of World to see by Johnny Mercer is maybe my favourite individual line of all time. When he first wrote the lyrics, apparently the record label asked him to re-do them because they thought they were too cryptic for a Pop song. I’m so glad he refused.



6. Kirsty MacColl | They Don’t Know
I love Kirsty MacColl’s voice, and this song especially shows off how wonderful she was. I sometimes think that if say, Morrissey, had written the line They don’t know about us, and they’ve never heard of Love it would be tattooed on so many more people right now.

7. Gloria Jones | Tainted Love
This is my ultimate dancing song. Every time I hear the handclap refrain (for want of a technical term) in the middle of the verse I imagine myself at Wigan Casino with talcum powder and everything.

8. Neutral Milk Hotel | Two-Headed Boy 
I could’ve picked anything off In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, but I went for this one after much deliberation. It’s just such a wonderful subject matter for a song.

9. Bright Eyes | Gold Mine Gutted
I really like listening to the rhythm of the words in this song. Meaning aside, there’s just such a brilliant musicality to the way the words have been put together.

10. Cinerama | Hard, Fast And Beautiful
I think to write a song declaring you don’t love your current girlfriend as much as your old girlfriend is a brave thing to do. I admire the honesty and I think the best songs come from being honest. To then get your current girlfriend to do the backing vocals on the song is just frankly outrageous.