Mixtape Philosophy: How to Ride a Tornado / 500th Post

I haven't posted anything in a few days because I was trying to scheme up something cool for The Musically Inclined's 500th post.

Well. Here we are. Happy 500th post to us.

Last night while watching the local news, I heard the weather person say that this week is the beginning of Tornado Season. If you grew up in an atmospherically volatile place like Nashville, Tornado Season conjures up a whole range of feelings from anxiety to annoyance. Never been through a bad tornado warning? Picture the Helm's Deep battle from Lord of the Rings. You cower inside while all hell breaks loose outside. And the worst thing is when a storm hits in the early hours of the morning. There were a few years in the 90s when it felt like I was woken up every other night in the spring by epic thunder, lightning, and the general sense that the gods were unhappy.

But the thing is, after 18-ish years of living here, I can't muster up a good fear anymore. Anyway, I thought it would be cool to make a themed mix in honor of the start of the season called How to Ride a Tornado. Themed mixes can be a little on the nose sometimes, but the last one I did (Flight Notes) was pretty fun.

I see this mix as a pre-storm calm down. Most of the songs have some repetitive or ambient quality, good for taming nerves. I'm most excited about "Surrender to the Storm" by Joseph Arthur off his recent 2-part album Redemption City. "Surrender to the Storm" breaks my rules about song length in mixes, but for good reason. At 11 minutes, it's an accurate mix of emotions and tensions during a rough weather system, from an awe for the power and drama of the storm, to the final soothing stages when the worst is over and it's just rain. There are also songs like "Windstorm" by School of Seven Bells that have interesting, mysterious sounds to them, not unlike the weirdness you hear in a storm. And then to close out, I picked "Rise to the Sun" by Alabama Shakes, partly because it's the perfect segue from "Surrender to the Storm," but also because the morning can be the best consolation.

Anyway, Happy Tornado Season.

PS ("Weather of a Killing Kind" by the Tallest Man on Earth might not show up on Spotify.)

Streaming: Joseph Arthur's The Graduation Ceremony

Crap. Can't find my keys.

I found Joseph Arthur a few years back, just after graduating from high school. He had a new record out called Let's Just Be and Paste Magazine included a cut from it on one of their sampler CDs. It was "Diamond Ring," one of the first posts I wrote for this blog. Apparently, at the time I didn't think it was anything spectacular. Oh well.

In any case, Arthur surfaced again a few months ago when I came across 2002's "Honey and the Moon." That, my friends, is a fine song, especially for the line "If you weren't real, I would make you up." Satisfying sap. It's just begging to be painted on a picture frame, which is a fitting intersection with two points in life these days. For one, it has come to my attention that NPR is streaming his newest album "The Graduation Ceremony," and it happens that I just graduated from college.

I know. Freaky.

Anyway, I got to listen to the album last night. I think I may need to spin it again, so judgment withheld for now, but it's nice to know Arthur turns up every time I graduate. We'll see what he cooks up next year when I finish my master's.

Joseph Arthur- "Diamond Ring" from Let's Just Be

Arthur starts off sounding a bit like John Mayer with jet lag but that quickly subsides into an at times screechy chorus--and I don't even mean screechy in a bad way. Over all it turns out to be a fairly palatable little 3 1/2 minute guitar-driven salute to ambivalence and possibly a girl. Not exactly mind-blowing but enjoyable. If it came on the radio, I'd turn it up rather than off.