Macromix 13

Track/ Rank

1/ 20 Kim Deal, “Are You Mine?”
-/ 19 Kurt Vile, “Girl Called Alex”
2/ 18 Chance The Rapper feat. Noname Gypsy, “Lost”
3/ 17 No Age, “An Impression”
4/ 16 Jeremy Jay, “Covered In Ivy”
5/ 15 The Men, “Half Angel Half Light”
6/ 14 Neko Case, “Man”
7/ 13 Pet Shop Boys, “Love Is A Bourgeois Construct”
8/ 12 Kelela, “Floor Show”
9/ 11 Disclosure feat. Sam Smith, “Latch”
10/ 10 Club 8, “Kill Kill Kill”
11/ 9 Laura Veirs, “That Alice”
12/ 8 The Thermals, “The Sunset”
13/ 7 Ex Cops, “James”
14/ 6 My Bloody Valentine, “New You”
15/ 5 Deerhunter, “Dream Captain”
16/ 4 John Grant, “GMF”
17/ 3 Youth Lagoon, “Mute”
18/ 2 Yo La Tengo, “Ohm”
19/ 1 Marnie Stern, “Year Of The Glad”

An abundance of great 6-minute songs (two of the top three!) makes this the first macromix that doesn’t fit handily on one CD, so I’ll be omitting “Girl Called Alex” from any CD copies I make, possibly replacing it with the only song I can find that’s short (and great) enough, Waxahatchee’s “Coast To Coast.” Remember that albums without obvious standout songs are generally disqualified from macromix consideration, expected to hold their own on the album list, so “Coast To Coast” is only an unofficial space-filler (Cerulean Salt’s standout is its sequencing more than a song).

And here I become conflicted. I’d thought the same thing about Danny Brown’s Old, its sequencing vs. its standouts, but lately (too late) find that “25 Bucks” is a song that resonates individually and that I really like hearing on its own. It took me a while to warm to the sound of Old, a little overbearing compared to the more obviously desolate sound of XXX, but now I’ve remembered that parts of it, like the song under consideration, are the exact color and texture of certain passages from my childhood. It might be a bit of a stretch, since the poorness and the psychological discomfort of my life have never resulted in hunger, coldness, physical discomfort or major dislocation, etc., never required anything but time as treatment (Dad playing craps for a pair of shoes, though, these foggy, distant, unimportant events never really stop), but the way Brown goes over and over and over his past and comes up with songs as compulsively listenable as “25 Bucks”… no artist is doing more useful and instructive work right now.

“It gets tiresome, writing about the same things, hoping this will be the time that someone wants to read it,” I said to a friend, who has stuff of his own he’s tired of writing. It’s certainly true that Danny Brown repeats himself on Old (no sleep in x days; I came too far to fuck it up) but he still has the right attitude for the unending semi-autobiographical project, and the energy and artistry, I imagine, to someday bring it to every living listener, with an enviable lack of shame/embarrassment that makes him approachable on strictly musical terms (i.e. the trauma of writing doesn’t overwhelm the music; most musicians have that, I think, but I don’t, that’s why I mention it). So, the great opening line of XXX (“colder…”) could’ve stood as an encompassing metaphor, screw anyone who didn’t hear it (their own fault), but it gets repeated (inverted, turned inward) on the great opening line of Old (“…heat”). There’s always more to say, and we lose lines like that when writers imagine they’ve found the ultimate words and ultimate audience for an idea.

Back to “25 Bucks,” briefly. “I’ll not get old” – I remember when I thought that, but somehow the hook is as pleasurable as it is painful, and doesn’t make me swallow too hard. The next song on the album is “Wonderbread,” a story I dreamed of writing when I was younger (mine was about a gallon of milk), in an exaggerated epic mode (a mistake), but I lacked the details and experiences to realize it. I only knew what was going on inside my home, if even, not outside of it. But let’s not suppose that locating some thread of identification is key to appreciating Old, etc. I only wanted to suggest an angle from which the album’s method resonates, not some notion that it’s about me. I haven’t even gotten to its second side, which this bullshit article would have me ask, “What’s a gay man doing listening to all this heterosexual sex?” – insulting, especially concerning the work of an artist, not a fantasy peddler. Here’s to the thrill of displacement, also known as the thrill of imagination, which gay men have a historical, necessary affinity for (in more complicated ways than the author of the article has ever dreamed) but seem to be losing.

Also:

Cream of the crop*: Justin Timberlake, “Mirrors”

Country songs: Pistol Annies, “Trading One Heartbreak For Another”; Ashley Monroe, “Like A Rose”; Kacey Musgraves, “Silver Lining”

Albuquerque song: Sad Baby Wolf, “Roaming”

*pop crap

And:

Also left to hold its own on the album list: Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories. But which song might I have chosen? Let me harmlessly yet probably somehow controversially rank them all, from favorite to least favorite…

1. Doin’ it Right
2. Within
3. Giorgio by Moroder
4. Instant Crush
5. The Game of Love
6. Fragments of Time
7. Get Lucky
8. Touch
9. Motherboard
10. Give Life Back to Music
11. Lose Yourself to Dance
12. Contact
13. Beyond

(If these images are meant to correspond to the two sides of Old then I have them in the wrong order. But no, the first one continues the preceding years’ nightlife theme and the second one is the comfortable alternative.)