Transport Me From This World And Its Troubles

Dreamy Lo-Fi Solstice Mix

2020 has been a melancholy year, but a reflective one with time for dreaming. Everyone needs a mix that help exorcise some blues without going over the edge and Solstice is the perfect excuse to craft a mix of ephemeral, but dark selections. The days are now getting shorter.

The Twilight Sad’s James Graham captures dreamy sadness beautifully with his lulling brogue alone, but the band name communicates the feeling with the best words possible. One of my favorite Scottish groups, they are famous for chest-blasting, loud shows, but they have plenty of shoegaze to embrace the quiet and brooding. They set the stage for this contemplatively sad and soothing selection of tracks.

1. The Twilight Sad — There’s a Girl in the Corner

I met the band the first time at really memorable show for this album at Neumos in Seattle and had their sophomore album signed. James was surprised I liked the album so much, but it was my gateway to these talented Glaswegians who eventually went on to tour with The Cure, who also covered this song.

2. Youth Lagoon — Raspberry Cane

Bright dreamscape builder, Trevor Powers captivates in his keening, childlike voice and captures for me a sense of psychedelia from Sgt. Pepper ilk. The song is inflected with light and expanse, even thought there is a lingering, sinister quality, particularly in the lyrics.

3. Black Sabbath — Planet Caravan

This is an unlikely, ephemeral melody with warm base guitar and a hint of doom. The effects and dubbing create a cosmic atmosphere rounding the thick, heavy Paranoid with a space rock vibe.

4. Thee Oh Sees — Palace Doctor

While this garage band hailing from San Fransisco are wonderfully loud, this trippy, spacious adventure evokes Perry Farrell-style wanderings. Oh Sees are incredibly melodic even in full roar, as my daughter may testify when she was tossing about in utero one of the last times I saw them, fully pregnant in a punk bar.

5. Spiritualized — A Perfect Miracle

Jason Pierce brings his array of musicians with violins and trademark ecclesiastical rock sound in the title track from the accomplished newest album. The electromagnetic space noise threading the song particularly reminds me of Pure Phase. Spiritualized is timeless and sustaining. When I got this LP in the mail, I regretted not catching the last tour for my would-be 5th show.

6. Low — So Blue

Slow-core masters Low, endured in relevance beyond many of my favorite indie bands, putting out consecutively more resonant albums. This evocative, near hymn is moving, sorrowful and transcendent. Spoiler alert: this would be the selection that could bring tears.

7. Beach House — Other People

Certain bands are quite seasonal for me but if it weren’t for Terry Barr’s recent nod to Beach House, I may have forgotten them this solstice because I am mostly playing records and not using my earbuds on the train to work.

Luscious, watching the sunset from your bed or on a bench with a pang in your heart kind of pop, this is my favorite track from Bloom.

8. Air — Vagabond

To me, an ultimate dream collaboration of favorites. Beck had the musical prescience in the early aughts to work with the true, French analog masters, Air, whose unmistakable sound suspends Beck’s voice in the stars. Air is probably in my top 10 and this collaboration assured me there is true harmony in the world.

9. Caribou — You and I

Also capable of painting gorgeous electronic mosaics, Dan Snaith’s new release is lush, retro, dancy and soothing. James Graham of Twilight Sad also happens to be a fan of this fellow Canadian’s commanding electronic lexicon.

10. DJ Shadow — Midnight in a Perfect World

Crate-digging, musical magpie Josh Davis weaves both heavy hip hop acoustics, operatic vocals and classical piano on this classic is wonderful company in solitude and dim lighting.

11. Massive Attack — Teardrop

Because Elizabeth Fraser. I considered many tracks but it kept coming back to the beautiful vocals and lyrics capturing the lucid, dreamlike tone of this mix. This track finishes off the flashback to late ‘90s electronica that I’ve been playing on my turntable lately.

12. Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse feat. David Lynch — Dark Night of the Soul

This is the title track from a beautifully bleak collaboration between dearly departed Mark Linkous, Danger Mouse and a host of guests. The album is apocryphal in that it was never properly made public. David Lynch’s voice is fucking brilliant with his haunting vocal track to this classically heavy, dreamy Sparklehorse static.

13. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds — Ghosteen

Nick Cave mentioned his recent Conversation tour last fall that if he could ever work on a score with another director, it would be David Lynch. The final track from his newest, breathtaking and tear-jerking epic, Cave visits the the liminal spirit world with a sense of optimism that comes after a fall. In his always inspiring Red Hand Files he explains, the band wants listeners of the album:

to feel as if it were climbing toward an exultant and euphoric state, for the record to be a vessel that transported the listener far away from the world and its troubles, and that it lived in the jubilant and hopeful beyond.

If you enjoyed this, please visit my debut piece on The Riff on crafting mixtapes: