Flak Magazine: Lavina Lee's 2003 annotated mix CD, 02.03.04

Transition. If I could sum 2003 up in a single word, that would be it. This past year marked my first full year out of California and in New York. That tremendous shift (and all the changes a year brings about on its own, regardless), found me gravitating toward sounds that recall the northern Left Coast: groves of redwoods, warmer weather, even the suburbia I grew up in. New York promised neverending buildings, incomparable energy (and exhaustion) and countless unknowns — all of which it's delivered. What my ears favored in contrast promised me everything else between and then some.

1. "Your Heart on Your Sleeve" | Colleen | Everyone Alive Wants Answers | Leaf | 2:46

What begins as a distorted calliope melody tumbles into a whimsical, trance-inducing toy soldiers' march. While the word (thus, the genre) "ambient" itself suggests background and the surrounding din, Parisienne Colleen (aka Cécile Schott) takes no notice, though her music could be classified as such (if you're into that sort of thing). "Your Heart on Your Sleeve," only one of an entire album of equally gorgeous tracks, will catch casual listeners off-guard (as it did me) and have them asking, "Who is this?"

2. "Stars and Sons" | Broken Social Scene | You Forgot It in People (Flak review) | Arts & Crafts/Paper Bag/Outside | 5:09

After the rest of Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It in People, a lovely mess of a mess of genres, faded up into the big, pretty pop-music jukebox in the sky, "Stars and Sons" held its ground with a catchy bass rhythm and singer (one of 'em, anyway) Brendan Canning's mumblings about... well, I don't know. He's mumbling. But maybe it was just the handclaps. I love handclaps.

3. "Between Us & Them" | Moving Units | Moving Units EP | Palm Pictures | 3:25

"Between Us & Them" from LA's Moving Units brings to mind not Southern California but New York City. A circular bass line leads the way through this rowdy post-punk leer, so determined it could accompany the roar of subways churning underground during morning rush hour (and the deafening shuffle of people that make it so rushed). Blake Miller rasps as lackadaisically as the song is charged, "We couldn't go wrong any faster."

4. "Kosinski" | The Angels of Light | Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home | Young God Records | 3:53

Like the Byrds' "Draft Morning," the Angels of Light's "Kosinski" conjures the fog-smothered coastline of Big Sur with swirling guitars that ring and echo with the same quality that makes light shimmer over water. And beneath the whirl, Michael Gira softly chants fragments of a faceless lover — her breathing, her hair, "small breasts rising," "blue veins softly tapping skin" — for a song more beautiful than anything the Swans ever did (which is probably still true despite the fact that I haven't heard everything the Swans ever did).

5. "For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti" | Sufjan Stevens | Greetings from Michigan... | Asthmatic Kitty/Sounds Familyre | 3:57

I've been told by more than one ex-Michigander that the place (Michigan, that is) is a wasteland, that its winter sky stays the same color for more than three months straight. Yet Devendra Banhart devoted a song to the Wolverine State (though he'd never even been there) and now Sufjan Stevens (actually from Michigan) pays tribute with an entire album. However desolate Michigan may be, it still inspires songs that are anything but — "For the Widows..." especially. A banjo plucks solemnly into Stevens' terribly beautiful chorus, "I'll do anything for you," which has been promised a million times before by lovers of all intentions, but which only sounds convincing here.

6. "Who Ray" | Hella | Total Bugs Bunny on Wild Bass | Narnack | 4:05

Hella owns the lease on vigorous math rock I could never possibly dance to (no matter how much I might want to try), and "Who Ray" is the song I might want to cry to, but I won't be able to do that, either. While its epileptic guitar melody is hypnotic and mournful, it also sounds like it could be the soundtrack for a fight scene in a serious video game. Like Ninja Gaiden. Then the song builds to a Hella-typical outburst from über-ambidextrous drummer Zach Hill and ends with what could be Bugs Bunny's death rattle. What am I supposed to do to that?

7. "Modula" | A Frames | 2 | S-S Records | 3:02

See the main mix.

8. "Maps" | Yeah Yeah Yeahs | Fever to Tell | Dress Up/Interscope | 3:39

See the main mix.

The band name and album title are misleading. So is the title of the song. No songs were recorded around any campfire, and there are no dogs barking anywhere on this track. Three of the Animal Collective's four members, though, did get together to make songs that could have been created around the campfire. A quiet and layered fireside song, "Doggy" hypnotizes with a guitar that sounds stuck between two chords, and vocals (from which "sweet doggy" are the only discernible words) that lilt so delicately that woodland fauna (and urban fauna! Subway rats aren't afraid of anything. In fact, I not-so-surreptitiously approached two of them mating on the platform a few weeks ago — while listening to a choral requiem on headphones) would have to be hard of hearing not to draw near.

10. "You Talk Way Too Much" | The Strokes | Room on Fire | RCA | 3:06

Julian Casablancas sounds astonishingly like the Motels' Martha Davis in "Suddenly Last Summer." Apparently, I'm the only one who hears it, though. But maybe Julian hears it, too, 'cause that's what he was going for in the first place, although I doubt it because I've never heard anyone sound as bored as he does in the chorus, which is precisely why this song is tops from these mops. Any good liar can make me sign up for a new phone service, but only one can sound this apathetic and still persuade me to give two chips.

11. "Minerva" | Deftones | Deftones | Maverick | 4:17

Sacramento boasts, among other things (insert Ah-nold joke here), such music greats as Tesla, Cake, the little-known but indie big Little Guilt Shrine and Deftones, for which "great" only probably applies to the last. In high school, I was duped by "The Distance" while "7 Words" was also hogging post-midnight airtime. The point, though, is not that I was really un-cool in high school (though that's true, too) but that if I had an anthem like "Minerva" with Chino Moreno crooning as large as the Capitol itself, maybe I wouldn't have gone to all those Cake shows. What was I thinking?

12. "From a Shell" | Lisa Germano | Lullaby for Liquid Pig (Flak review) | Ineffable/iMusic/Artist Direct | 2:58

It's not news that sad can be beautiful and that the beautiful often exists in the tiniest and quietest of things — mope-folkie-ish Lisa Germano structures songs upon this very tenet. "From a Shell" is built upon this, too, but it's tiny only in that it's a microcosm of a universe too large to manage unless condensed to a few notes and Germano's voice, conversely small and large enough to make out gulps and cracks, singing, "And the earth spins 'round/ while the people fall down/ and the world stands still/ not a sound, not a sound."

No, not another band from New York City! Don't worry, TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe can sing (and how!) and then there's this: "We were all weaned my dear/ upon the same fatigue" — couplet of the year?

14. "The Young Machines" | Her Space Holiday | The Young Machines | Mush | 4:24

A beautiful instrumental from a horn-rimmed fellow named Marc Bianchi (who records under the Her Space Holiday moniker), who actually sang, "So your boyfriend has no clue/ Of how much I've been touching you." This track, thankfully, replaces sensitive indie-boy musings with raindroppy xylophone tinkling, lush drumbeats and handclaps, which, as you all know by now, are perfectly acceptable in my book.

15. "Almost the Same" | Clearlake | Cedars | Domino | 3:56

See the main mix.

16. "Don't Be Scared" | A.R.E. Weapons | A.R.E. Weapons | Rough Trade | 4:07

Listening to a boy whine about relationship woes, however sympathetic you may be, is unbearable, but listening to A.R.E. Weapons' Brain F. McPeck quip, "People think you're a loser, a drug abuser/ 'Cause you like to get high/ That's all right, mama, so do I" will instantly win you over to the misfits who already believe his every word. And really, how could it not when he hollers ridiculous phrases ("Spazz on, spazz!") with such conviction?

17. "A Wolf at the Door (It Girl. Rag Doll.)" | Radiohead | Hail to the Thief (Flak review) | Capitol | 3:24

Flan, which sounds funny, somehow manages to find its way into Thom Yorke's breathless logorrhea, but the disquieting chorus, in which he personifies the fears of fatherhood as an actual wolf at the door, is beautifully heart-wrenching in a way only his kicked-puppy vocals are capable of. Radiohead may don the socially and politically conscious suit well (the title Hail to the Thief, whatever they say, is about as subtle and unintentional as Warhol's pop-culture jabs), but for the same reason that "Creep" appealed to all the unloved with bad postures and social skills to match, the fully titled "A Wolf at the Door. (It Girl. Rag Doll.)" calls to everyone who's ever been afraid to sleep with the closet door open.

18. "Sister Savior" | The Rapture | Echoes | DFA/ Strummer/Universal | 3:51

Don't bother looking it up; this really did come out in 2003, not 1983.

19. "Lavender Moon" | King Creosote | Kenny and Beth's Musakal Boat Rides | Domino | 3:55

Creosote is "a brownish oily liquid... used especially as a wood preservative." "Lavender Moon" by the Scottish King Creosote trickles like molasses and will draw sap from the most wooden of hearts.

20. "Before We Begin" | Broadcast | Haha Sound (Flak review) | Warp | 3:22

All of Broadcast's Haha Sound is fantastic, but only on "Before We Begin" does house siren Trish Keenan sigh this beautifully. Like a mystical creature from an ocean so clear you can see straight to the bottom (and flocked on all sides by other shimmering sea creatures who just happen to be able to provide back-up vocals), Keenan crisply coos, "Here again/ at the end/ before the beginning." And so we are.

E-mail Lavina Lee at lavina at flakmag dot com.