Flak Magazine: Lavina Lee's 2002 annotated mix CD, 01.31.03

The languid caterwauling (courtesy of bassist Robert Lowe) that pitches this song (and this mix as well as To Everybody, for that matter) into tune is nonsensical, fearlessly falsetto and completely addictive. Anchored by vocalist Brian Case purring such lines as "I drink to remember ... and I drink to forget," and Andy Lansangan crawling sultrily up and down the keyboard, "I've got designs on you" is more early '80s Cure than '02 90 Day Men. When Lowe and Case join precariously just-out-of-sync for the line, "that you maybe goin', yeah, too far" and the keyboard slinks in with hypnotic arpeggios, you'd better be listening with headphones.

2. "Green Grass of Tunnel" | Múm | Finally We Are No One | Fat Cat | 4:51

Without any new, real releases from that other Icelander, the four-piece Icelandic Múm filled my Scandinavian fix for the year. Icicle-like chimes, saccharine female vocals, softly mewling strings, dusty feet-shuffling beats and the pre-school playroom quality of the combination of them all perpetuate my fantasy of Iceland being filled with green hills and dancing elves.

3. "Story of the Whole Thing" | Out Hud | S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D. | Kranky | 4:58

Sacramento transplants (like me!) to Brooklyn, Out Hud busk dance-funk with strings (that's cello and bass) without cauterizing the effect of either. To wit, "Story of the Whole Thing" really is the whole potato, luring inspired dance-floor swaying straight to lascivious bedroom limbo and back again. The guitar riff that comes in just past the four-minute mark has me swooning every time.

4. "Let the Distance Keep Us Together" | Britt Daniel & Bright Eyes | Home Split EP Series, Vol. IV | Post Parlo | 3:24

Kill the Moonlight has its moments, but this joint effort from Spoon frontman Britt Daniel and Bright Eyes is ridiculously catchy. Daniel behind the mic sounds more sincere than on Moonlight, crooning the endearing, "You got it all and you know." If rock 'n' roll is "na na na," pop is "doo doo doo."

5. "Anything for Now" | Do Make Say Think | & Yet & Yet | Constellation | 9:17

If you're going to put a nine-minute song on your 80-minute mix of the best songs of the entire year, it better be good.

This is what I told myself when I gave my white flag over to 2002 in exchange for "Anything for Now." Among songs of comparable length, this one doesn't do much — the tempo remains consistent; the guitars, keyboards and chugging beats wash over each other; and by the middle of the song, it even loses its melody for over two minutes of monotonous humming — but it's such perfectly beautiful nothing-doing, it doesn't have to build up to anything.

See the main mix.

7. "Astral" | Calla | Insound Tour Support Series, Vol. 22 | Insound | 4:05

"Astral" also can be found on Calla's 2003 release, Televise (Arena Rock), but the version on that, the band's third full-length, is not as stripped as this. Vocalist Aurelio Valle glides over slow "Black Metallic"-era Catherine Wheel guitars, whisper-singing, "If you think I should." Ditching the louder drone of its earlier work, Calla still suspends a single mood, lingering around a melody in a musical equivalent of ellipses. "Astral" trails like a flashlight in the dark.

8. "Favours" | The Delgados | Hate | Mantra | 4:36

Hate didn't see its U.S. release until this year, but import copies were plentiful and my curiosity was too much to wait for the follow-up to the epic Great Eastern. For Hate, the Delgados found themselves working with Dave Fridmann of cinematic, soaring strings fame, and "Favours," with all its cinematic-ness, found itself on my year-end mix. The grandiosity works here, though, with Emma Pollack's voice pitching high over the bombast of swooping strings and a backing choir. "Are we feeling too much?" she asks. Well, with the crashing cymbals and all, it's entirely possible, but the Delgados pull it off without sounding like they don't mean it.

9. "So Little" | Nina Nastasia | The Blackened Air | Touch & Go | 3:27

Nina Nastasia's voice is impeccably, heart-wrenchingly beautiful; The Blackened Air is proof. No track showcases her prowess as well as the simple "So Little." Over sweetly twanging strings, Nastasia sings, "I am not a part/ of all your tar and feathering talk/ I only hear teeth clicking about/ in your voice bouncing on walls in our house," delivering as well as she means. I'm convinced that no one can sing the word "ass" with as much sophistication and sorrow.

And while I'm on a guitar-and-vocals kick, "Southern Anthem" strums straight to wherever it is that lullaby-ish back-porch songs like this go. Possibly Nina Nastasia's male counterpart as far as heart-wrenching vocalists are concerned, Iron & Wine's Sam Beam conjures bleak and charming images as well as Mark Linkous. Where dogs eat birthday cakes, horses die standing up. Beam sings in the distance.

11. "Pneumonia" | Fog | Fog | Ninja Tune | 5:05 | mp3 removed

Millipedes and silverfish and bears, oh my! Not really. See the main mix.

It was a tough call deciding which guitar/drums arsenal bludgeoned best, but "Republic of Rough and Ready" wins hands down (or hands together, as is the case) for incorporating handclaps. A band of contradictions, this duo from Sacramento, Calif., (hi!) knows how to let loose with calculated restraint for pulse-racing math rock.

Isaac Brock's voice. Squeaky guitar strings. It will never be "Dramamine" or "Novocain Stain" or anything Modest Mouse did, but the guitar's pretty and I'm a sucker. Plus, it mentions a pony not once, but twice (!) and includes the lines, "pretty bird, pretty mouth." I love it, whatever it means.

14. "Six Days" (Radio Edit) | DJ Shadow | The Private Press | MCA | 3:40

Seamless sampling is DJ Shadow's shtick; that is, what he chooses to re-use doesn't sound used. While The Private Press is no Endtroducing..., "Six Days" broods and sashays as well as "Midnight in a Perfect World," exhaling with the smoking melancholy of '60s dive regulars.

15. "Silent Morning" | The Rapture | "House of Jealous Lovers" 12" | DFA | 6:33

A guitar climbs faintly in with jingling bells in the background before "Silent Morning" explodes with "ahs" and psychedelic blips that don't really belong to this decade, or even this century. The aptly titled band sounds as overwhelmed as the song is overwhelming. Vocalist Luke Jenner trembles and wails over swirling guitars until the song trails off as it did in, but with a tinkling piano melody that sounds like it was played on one of those tinny uprights.

See the main mix.

The EP (stuff I heard after painstakingly arranging the aforementioned 80 minutes of music, and think should get some attention, or stuff where 700 MB made me trade it in for something shorter, or I'm just a big cheater):

17. "The Last Trumpeter Swan" | Deerhoof | Reveille | 5RC | 8:11

It starts out sounding like an angry Tricky before the Unwound-ish guitars snake in and the song collapses and rebuilds and eventually can't make up its mind about how it wants to sound. It does end up sticking with the foreboding guitars, though, with vocals a la Blonde Redhead (for the most part, just a woman owling various pitches) buried beneath the sticky dissonance. "And you like it because..." Well, if "Swan" is a tunnel of noise and its vocals the light at the end, then you have a bit of over eight minutes of Unwound.

18. "Fearless" | Low | "Canada" single | Kranky | 5:55

I'm not going to write about how stark this song is, or how slow it is, or how subtle it is, or any of those other things that I've been known to say about Low because "Fearless" is none of those. This Pink Floyd cover is true to the original with Alan Sparhawk aping Roger Waters and successfully pulling it off. The sight of the surprisingly lively Sparhawk hopping around on stage for all the bouncing guitar parts makes the live version even better. And I'd like to take this chance to say that Low is an absolutely stunning live act.

19. "Cosmos and Demos" | Devendra Banhart | Oh Me Oh My ... The Way the Day Goes by the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit | Young God Records | 3:35

Devendra Banhart doesn't always make for easy listening ("Nice People" isn't nice at all), but then along comes a song that will ease the furrow in your brow. "Cosmos and Demos" was the song for me, with its minstrel's guitar plucking and Banhart playing nice by holding in the unnecessary howling.

20. "This Is What It Is" | Nina Nastasia | The Blackened Air | Touch & Go | 4:17

"So Little" made it to my main mix because it's beautiful and telling of Nastasia's pitch-perfect pipes (it's also 50 seconds shorter than this song), but "This Is What It Is" remains the first track on The Blackened Air that held my attention. Dramatic and fraught with strings, it also contains the line, "Forget your head, it's always there," which I need to remember when I'm letting the city fill it with muck and stress and stuff.

21. "all our base belong to them" | The Books | Thought for Food | Tomlab | 4:18

The song title is nonsense, but the song itself is a classy blend of banjo, guitars, samples and mumbled vocals. It opens, sounding like it wants to be a Bedhead song, then falls into a Thanksgiving dinner conversation, some German guy and then some throaty cooing beginning with "I was born on the day that music died."

22. "Prove My Hypotheses" | Death Cab for Cutie | You Can Play These Songs with Chords | Barsuk | 4:12

This was originally released on a 7", but what better excuse to include my favorite Death Cab for Cutie song than a re-release of demos and "previously unreleased" tracks? The lingering, melancholy guitar-pop and Ben Gibbard's charming vocals that swoop up for the "wait here" in the lines, "You said wait here/ prove all my hypotheses" are as punchy as Death Cab gets.

23. "Crying at the Aquarium" | The Octopus Project | Identification Parade | Peek-A-Boo | 5:50

All of Identification Parade is an outstanding mix of acoustic and electronic, but when the beat drops in "Crying at the Aquarium," even the fish will be bobbing their heads as the eels wish for asses to shake.

24. "Sympathy for the Strawberry" | Sonic Youth | Murray Street | Interscope | 9:06

I couldn't justify two nine-minute songs on the same 80-minute mix, so something had to give. "Sympathy for the Strawberry" may not be EVOL-worthy, but it finds Kim sounding lushly nicotine-coated over fuzzed-out guitars. Typical? Maybe, but when the song pauses somewhere in the middle and kicks back in, I couldn't care less.

E-mail Lavina Lee at lavina@stutters.net.