Buried under the glut of disco-tropic, glow-in-the-dark, sand-crusted, ocean-smoothed chillout-and-blissout music that appears to have defined summer 2009, I was still listening to some pretty antithetical stuff that never made it onto this blog for fear of it becoming the place where your buzz went to die. But I love dark, sad and twisted songs all the same, and this past season saw plenty of mindbending bands go all-in on needling melancholy, hard psych, icy dub, damaged pop and warped dance beats. They were stuck on the zeitgeist’s flipside, peddling moody, bizarro-world hit singles.* This is not your roommate’s Labor Day BBQ soundtrack. Enjoy.
*Okay, maybe jj’s “Ecstasy” counts as an actual hit.
Mix includes:
The Antlers /// “Sylvia”
The Assemble Head In Sunburst Cloud /// “The Slumbering Ones”
Banjo Or Freakout /// “This City Is Fake”
Calexico /// “Two Silver Trees”
The Clean /// “Are You Really On Drugs”
Clubroot /// “Talisman”
The Field /// “The More That I Do”
Frat Dad /// “Broseph”
Japandroids /// “The Boys Are Leaving Town”
Jay Reatard /// “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me”
jj /// “Ecstasy”
Jonathan Johansson /// “En Hand I Himlen”
Mount Eerie /// “Lost Wisdom Pt. 2”
Night Control /// “East Side”
Odawas /// “Boy In The Yard”
Pictureplane /// “Cyclical Cyclical (Atlantis)”
A Place To Bury Strangers /// “In Your Heart”
Ramona Falls /// “Russia”
The Rural Alberta Advantage /// “Four Night Rider”
A Sunny Day In Glasgow /// “Starting At A Disadvantage”
Worriedaboutsatan /// “You’re In My Thoughts”
