sharing time II

I was watching a movie earlier today (okay, it was Rachel Getting Married) and was really struck by...well, its fantastic use of music. Not in the sense of a score, because there isn't one: in the sense that people in the movie are always playing music, and it really does have a different structural feel than a score does. Sort of...well, real.

This inspired me to make you a mix.

For me, making a mix tape is often weighed down by the burden of trying to get across a message and the politics of what is actually appropriate to say to someone else via music (think "High Fidelity". Seriously...), but I wanted this to be something a little different. I wanted this to be like...if you were at my apartment this January and we were drinking coffee/eating carryout, these would be the songs that you would have been most likely to hear. There is no design to their order; some of them are songs that leaked this month, some of them are songs that have been around for a long time, and some of them have definitely lost their luster for me (I'm looking at you, Hot Chip) already. Still, here they are:

hxxp://www.mediafire.com/?wk5ntmvwd2d

(Many of you are probably familiar with the idea: change the "xx" to "tt", go, download.)

Music, like everything else, has a complicated underlying structure that isn't necessary to understand for an individual to appreciate the effect. The way that people relate to the music that other people make is kind of incredible, if you think about it: lullabies, Britney Spears, Bob Dylan, Beat Happening, hymns, dirges, you know. The whole damn thing. Songs kind of get to have it both ways: they are capable of having a permanent and and evolving structure that can exist simultaneously and unthreateningly. Totally derivative, terrible music can still bring people a lot of joy.

What are you guys listening to these days?