Unthemed tape: "Shatter The Lenses"

Tracks 1 and 2 represent something that had been stuck in my head for a long time: that "I've Just Seen A Face" sounded an awful lot like a Simon & Garfunkel song. "I Am A Rock" opens well, I think, and that was that. Putting the pair at the beginning also meant I could then move on to more modern material, but then the question arose of how to pivot from the clearly older sound and style of two 60s bands to more complex stuff. Caribou comes in handy in these situations, I find, because his music tends to borrow very strongly from that oldies era but also work in new twists.

Moving into the heart of the tape, I lucked out somewhat when the harmonica outro to "Domesticada" matched the harmonica intro for "Kick The Stones," because that allowed me to cheat a little bit going from a lighter overall sound into something a little blusier and darker. Whitley's blues background matched up with Doughty's, whose energy serves as a preparation for the real star of the tape, "Lisztomania." From there the tape winds down pretty directly, each track taking it down a little bit from the previous one, with "The Method" closing on a weird but decidedly up note.

1. Simon & Garfunkel - I Am A Rock
2. The Beatles - I've Just Seen A Face
3. Caribou - Barnowl
4. Mosquitos - Domesticada
5. Chris Whitley - Kick The Stones
6. Mike Doughty - Unsingable Name
7. Phoenix - Lisztomania
8. Ted Leo + The Pharmacists - Little Dawn
9. A Band Of Bees - These Are The Ghosts (Undead version)
10. R.E.M. - Belong
11. We Are Scientists - The Method