1. Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks

This track is both familiar and awe inspiring. The melody is so beautiful yet strikingly simple and then it hits the chorus and opens up into this high and spacious progression. I just love it, it makes me sway back and forth and I’m lulled into happiness.

2. Sanford Clark – The Fool

This is a sad 50s country tune that is one of my first memories of feeling empty inside while listening to it. The reverb on this track totally sets the tone for the haunted and sad feeling this gives me.

3. Shout Out Louds – Tonight I Have to Leave it

This song is what happens when you mix happy sounding chords with a sad melody. This is one of my favorite combinations of that and the SOLs do this so right. And yes, his voice sounds like Robert Smith, but is that a bad thing?

4. Fever Ray – Keep the Streets Empty For Me

Karin is my hero. She can make any song sound creepy and captivate you. Her melodies are always classic and her lyrics spoken through the eyes of someone with very pure, unadulterated, thoughts.

5. Radiohead – Exit Music for a Film

When I first heard this song, I felt exactly like the song’s literal meaning. It is so cinematic, you feel both courageous and despair
when you listen to Thom Yorke’s delivery.

6. Blonde Redhead – Equally Damaged

This song is delicately tragic. It’s a beautiful and haunting and you can almost see yourself in the room with Kazu while she is singing this it’s so intimate.

7. Fleet Foxes – He Doesn’t Know Why

This song is brilliant. I love how dynamic and orchestrated everything is in this song and you can’t really date this song, it’s timeless.

8. The Walkmen - Canadian Girl

The Walkmen make very brave, unique music and they just get better every album. This song has a cool 50′s vibe yet still sounds fresh and new.

9. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fancy

This track is so dark and brooding. Pounding drums, atmosphere, dynamics. Amazing and seemingly overlooked.

10. Super Furry Animals – Sidewalk Surfer Girl

Great song with beautiful vocal melodies and the production is just ridiculous.

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Begin Playlist:

“If There Is Something” – Roxy Music (Roxy Music)
Notes: It’s a long wait until 1:37 in, but that’s when this one gets going with Andy Mackay’s Sax sounding the alarm. Ferry almost eggs on Mackay with his\’a0ultra-vibrato and then at 2:38, Mackay takes over blending his squeaks, shrieks, and shrills with Eno’s effects in perfect harmony)

“Hazey Jane II” – Nick Drake (Bryter Layter)
Notes: Must have been recorded on the one day that Drake woke up on the right side of the bed. Belle &\’a0Sebastian owe a lot to this one)

“Suspicious Minds” – Elvis Presley (Suspicious Minds)
Notes: The horns don’t come in until the second verse, story goes they weren’t in the original recording and the King added them after a test run of the\’a0song in Las Vegas with the International Casino horns. Whatever the case may be, they make the song.)

“la Chanson de Slogan” by Serge Gainsburg & Jane Berkin (Slogan Soundtrack)
Notes: Slinky, French, fabulous.

“Compagnon De La Vie” by Amadou & Miriam (Welcome to Mali)
Notes: Horns West Africian style

“Cherry Lips” by Archie Bronson Outfit (Derdang Derdang): Notes: Outro Sax Solo\’a0would make Roxy Music proud.

“Neverevereverdid” by Architecture in Helsinki (In Case We Die)
Notes: Who wouldn’t want their album to start like this. Part high school band, part spooky haunted house music. Then the two accelerandos are classic – “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice and you’ve got a really catchy song!”

“The Shining” by Badly Drawn Boy (The Hour of the Bewilderbeast)
Notes: French\’a0horn is the rarest of Rock n’ Roll horns, but it’s so good when used\’a0like this.

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by Rolling Stones (Let It Bleed)
Notes: Or\’a0like this…