Payday Playlist: Blood and Rust

There's no real theme to this installment of the Payday Playlist. It's primarily a mash-up of stuff I've been listening to lately. You'll see a lot of the same artists who appeared on the last playlist (Little Red Bullets) and/or in the daily posts. There are a few too-cute word associations here ("The Funeral" leads into "Down In A Hole"; "Sad Eyes" leads into "Still Water," which repeatedly uses the lyric "sad eyes"; "Scare Easy" is followed by "don't know why I'm still afraid," the opening line of "Honey And The Moon" ... you get the picture). But mostly its just thrown together based on flow. The mix turned out a bit more mellow than I anticipated after opening with the mighty "I'm Amazed," and I'm not entirely happy with the second half. But I promised to put these things up every other Thursday, so here it is, half-baked as it may be. Let me know what you think in the comments section.

1. My Morning Jacket - "I'm Amazed" - Evil Urges (2008). With Evil Urges, MMJ molted, trimming their unruly beards, shredding their tangled tresses, and casting off convention, reinventing their sound and stretching boundaries. That said, "I'm Amazed" is a throwback to another time in American rock 'n' roll as well as to MMJ's own reverb-laden, classic rock back catalog. This track is my favorite rock song of the year to date.
2. Fleet Foxes - "Mykonos" - Sun Giant EP (2008). If My Morning Jacket listened to nothing but old Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young vinyl for a year, and added layers of honey-drenched vocal harmonies to Jim James' lead, they might put out something that sounds like Fleet Foxes. These guys are the real deal. I just got turned onto them about two weeks ago, and I already feel like I've been listening to them for years. I mean that in a good way -- it's not that they don't sound fresh, it's that their songs already feel like they've stood the test of time. In addition to the warm harmonies, unexpected melodies, and classic soft rock song-within-a-song structures, their lyrics take you there:

   The door slammed loud and rose up a cloud of dust on us
   Footsteps follow, down through the hollow sound, torn up
   And you will go to Mykonos
   With a vision of a gentle coast
   And a sun to maybe dissipate
   Shadows of the mess you made
   

3. The Avett Brothers - "The Greatest Sum" - The Second Gleam (2008). The Avett Bros.' new EP came out on July 22. I've already listened to "The Greatest Sum" like a grillion times. It's that good. The Avett Bros. are that good. While capable of some very heavy music ("dark and lonely is the ride, the devil always by my side"), they almost always sound like they're having more fun than you. I want to be an Avett Brother.
4. Band Of Horses - "The Funeral" - Everything All The Time (2006). While Band of Horses' 2007 effort, Cease To Begin, owned my iPod for a long time, lately I've been looking back to their first album. It still rocks me.
5. Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - "Down In A Hole" - Follow The Light EP (2007). Lest you think I have a beard-band fetish, here is man-mane-free Ryan Adams. The first of several covers on this playlist, Adams does to Alice in Chains' "Down In A Hole" what he previously did to Oasis' "Wonderwall" -- turns it into a brilliantly plaintive country rocker. When I saw AIC at the (now defunct) Edge in Orlando in November '92 (Screaming Trees opened), this eerily prescient song rocked the house, even though Layne Staley performed alternately from a wheelchair or on crutches.
   
6. Radiohead - "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" - In Rainbows (2007). In the hands (mouth?) of Thom Yorke, "words are blunt instruments, words are a sawed-off shotgun." No surprise that the opening, welcome and seductive as Friday night out after a long week ("Just as you take my hand/just as you write my number down/just as the drinks arrive/just as they play your favorite song/as your bad day disappears/no longer wound up like a spring..."), gives way to darker thoughts ("wish away the nightmare").
   
7. Blind Pilot - "Go On, Say It" - 3 Rounds And A Sound (2008). I don't know much about these guys. I think I found this as a free iTunes song of the week or something. Probably unfair for them to follow a great song by Radiohead. It's not in the same league as "Jigsaw Falling Into Place," but its a nice, catchy little piece of folkish indie-pop that immediately reminded me of The Shins' "New Slang."
8. Mudcrutch - "Scare Easy" - Mudcrutch (2008). The name Mudcrutch invokes early-90's Seattle grunge acts, but its actually Tom Petty's early 70's Gainesville southern rock outfit. "Scare Easy" is vintage Petty.
9. Joseph Arthur - "Honey And The Moon" - Redemption's Son (2002). Didn't know about this guy until I heard the Michael Stipe/Chris Martin Hurricane Katrina relief cover of his song "In The Sun." Solid singer/songwriter stuff. "Right now the sun is trying to kill the moon." Which naturally leads us to....
   
10. Sun Kil Moon - "Kentucky Woman" - Elizabethtown: Songs From The Brown Hotel [Soundtrack] (2006). I don't think Neil done it this way. Seriously, crap, I suffered through "Elizabethtown" by largely ignoring everything but the great music, and still didn't realize that "Kentucky Woman" played in the movie until I came across this little gem recently. That's how different Sun Kil Moon's cover is from Neil Diamond's original. For my money, though, the definitive take on this classic is my own epic live version, performed regularly at Big Daddy's Roadhouse in Orlando via karaoke at least weekly for the better part of '04-'05.
11. Justin Townes Earle - "Lone Pine Hill" - The Good Life (2008). Steve Earle's kid is a self-professed Civil War buff, and it shows in this haunting ballad. It's a great story song. I assumed it was an updated take on a traditional piece from the 1800's until I read this interview with young JT Earle. The kid gives good interview:

    Q: So, when writing these story songs, it’s more about reinterpreting and modernising age-old tales? A: That’s what Springsteen did to Woody Guthrie’s music and that’s what Dylan did to Woody Guthrie’s music and that’s what made them the writers that they were. They didn’t sit down thinking they were writing the Great American folk song. As Dylan said in No Direction Home, he was not creating anything new, he was just working with existing forms and putting them into the words of the times.

12. Jason Isbell - "The Magician" - Sirens Of The Ditch (2007). Terrific song equating Isbell's singer/songwriter art with the prestidigitation and illusions of a stage magician. "You know it's what I do, but never who I am" reminds me of the "What do you do?"/"I'm a human being, not a human doing" exchange from Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. At least, that's where I think it's from. Could be mistaking it for the way an old friend used to introduce himself when we worked a music store together. I'll research this and get back to you. Not really.
    
13. The Wood Brothers - "Postcards From Hell" - Loaded (2008). Another song about a singer. Dammit, just realized that I should have followed this with Skynyrd's "Ballad of Curtis Loew."
    
14. Jackie Greene - "Travelin' Song" - Gone Wanderin' (2002). A fun bit of folk from Jackie Greene's debut.
    
15. Jakob Dylan - "Will It Grow" - Seeing Things (2008). OK, so it's Dylan-lite, but it's still Dylan. Listening to this album, it's easy to imagine that Jakob Dylan's work with the Wallflowers was largely an effort at distancing himself from his father. On Seeing Things, he's come home to claim his inheritance. Ah, Rick Rubin, is there no one you cannot strip down to their roots?
16. Amos Lee - "What's Been Going On?" - Last Days At The Lodge (2008). "There goes her old beat-up car/outside of our old favorite bar/she's probably in there playing her guitar/with stars in her eyes/those are some of my favorite memories/all those carefree melodies/while I'm out here on this raging sea/about to capsize." Pretty straight-forward singer/songwriter stuff here, but Lee makes the material sound better than it is.
17. Billy Bragg - "The Only One" - Workers Playtime (1988). I'm not sure this one fits on this set, but I've found myself clicking on it a lot lately and so included it.
    
18. Bruce Springsteen - "Sad Eyes" - Tracks (1998). Why do I like this song? It is Bruce, but that's some really cheesy production. But it is Bruce.... I clicked on it a few weeks ago while looking for the next song on this list, "Still Water," which I always convince myself is called "Sad Eyes." And then I found myself listening to the Boss' "Sad Eyes" several times, thoroughly enjoying a tune I glossed over when first I delved into his Tracks compilation. Still, damn, that's some cheesy production. I may cull this one from the herd if/when I burn this mix to CD. Can Springsteen ever be a guilty pleasure?
19. Daniel Lanois - "Still Water" - Acadie (1989). Lush and replete with Lanois' signature ethereal sound.
    
20. Ron Sexsmith - "Ships Go Out" - Real: The Tom T. Hall Project (1998). From French-Canadian Lanois to Toronto songsmith Sexsmith. Sexsmith. Awesome name. Literally means that he makes sex. When it comes to the names of Canadian singer/songwriters, Ron Sexsmith made out way better than Bruce Cockburn.
    
21. Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová - "Into The Mystic" - Once [Soundtrack - bonus DVD version only] (2007). Van Morrison's "Into The Mystic" is one of my favorite songs - maybe even the favorite song, depending on when you ask. So I'm not inclined to swoon for a cover version. But this one is pretty solid, as those things go. It's a pretty straight-forward acoustic take, not really a reinvention or new interpretation. I really dug the quirky little movie "Once," casting these musicians as the leads, and that more than this cover is probably the source of my affection.