Mixtape Philosophy: It's Brighter When the Lights are Out

The saga of the mix club continues. For anyone tuning in late, some friends and I have an arrangement for swapping Spotify playlists every week or so. Tonight I posted my second contribution, a mix called "It's Brighter When the Lights Are Out." Like I did last time, I thought I'd post the mix and a walk through.

Some months ago, I found a couple tracks by Simon Dawes (L.A. band Dawes's previous incarnation) and really loved them so I decided to build this mix around "The Awful Things," which is a punky-er turn on the Dawes sound. That set me on a mission to find songs that recalled guitar-bent, west coast music from decades past. That was not hard to do. A few that came to mind immediately were Howler's "Back of Your Neck" which I posted about this summer, "Learn How to Hang" by David Vandervelde, and The Explorer Club's "Do You Love Me," which is an awesomely bizarre combo of the Beach Boys and Phil Spector, essentially.

I also got the chance to work in some Madi Diaz, and because Madi Diaz and Keegan DeWitt are linked in my mind, I followed it up with "Jonti" by Wild Cub. It's a killer track that gets better with every listen. I cant' say enough good things about its sounds and spirit. "Jonti" is also where I got the name for the mix. DeWitt sings, "I see it now, it's brighter when the lights are out." I thought that was a great lyric and great name for the mix.

Record label samplers, NoiseTrade, and the like also helped me out this time around and I really did make some good finds. For example, "It Lingers" by Cheyenne Marie Mize and "How I Roll" by Charlie Mars, both important for the mix in terms of tone and pacing. Speaking of which, I thought the first couple drafts lacked something. Tthe mix needed one more song early on to bring things down just a bit for the middle section. I took to the ever reliable Paste Magazine and almost right off the bat ran into an article about a band from California called Allah-Las that have a kind of sepia-tinged retro thing going on and it was a real "bingo" moment. "Vis-a-Vis" fit perfect.

For the first time I included an instrumental called "Native New Yorker" by Booker T. which set up perfectly for "The Awful Things," and that pretty much brings us back to the beginning.

I've embedded the Spotify playlist above. I hope you take it for a spin. Sometimes you make these things and have no idea if A) anyone heard it or if B) anyone liked it. Anyway. There you have it. The very latest in mixtape philosophy.

Early Days: Simon Dawes

During the time The Musically Inclined went on hiatus this spring/early summer, I developed a great love for L.A. band Dawes, which weirdly is not really reflected in this blog. Case in point: Death Cab for Cutie has a whopping 31 post tags. Well, I guess there's nothing stopping me now. In reading up on the band, I found out about an earlier incarnation, if you can call it that, called Simon Dawes featuring Taylor Goldsmith and bassist Wylie Gelber plus a couple randos. They didn't last too long, but they managed to pack in an LP,  two EPs, and opening gigs with the Walkmen and Band of Horses (to name a few) in the three-ish years they were active. There are some scattered Youtube videos out there, and only one of their EPs, Final Noise, is on Spotify. The part of Simon Dawes I like the best is how not Dawes it is (Alternative? Indie rock? Punk lite?). It's fun to hear the difference. A while ago I read an article that basically said when Simon Dawes gave out to Dawes, it was like the they started wearing boots and plaid shirts and just took on that Jackson Browne-Laurel Canyon-70s California rock-thing, and after hearing the early stuff, I'm was thinking, "My God, they kind of did." How do you just do that? How do you just drop a style and cop another one? Must take some intense dexterity.

I'd like to be disappointed or something, but I'm not. It's like running across an old high school yearbook photo. The two Simon Dawes on Spotify are hard to ignore. "If You Were A Girl" has a very mid career Beatles-esque melody. "The Awful Things" is raggedly energetic and is probably implying an influence I don't know. The lyrics are Goldsmith good, too. "I know the bookies at the corner store. They taught me secrets of the universe and how to talk to girls– a sticky situation that'll put your tongue in curls." I'm going to pick up their debut album Carnivore when I can and see how the rest goes. Check out the Spotify playlist above for those two tracks.