Meldrick

…is the name of a new mixtape, er, mix CD I put together for springtime (put yours together here). It’s named for the last of my childhood pets, put to rest last weekend in the presence of my mom (and there he is, reflected in the disc, above!), and though it’s not really about him, it does contain a couple songs that were important to me during his young cathood. He was two and I was 12* when Sleater-Kinney and Superchunk released excellent late-century albums, and to hear these again after a long absence suggests them as foundational albums from a delicate era, one that I’d like to have back for a day. (If I didn’t learn from these bands everything I love about melody and other feelings only found in music, I might as well have.)

I’ve spent a lot of my life in the past, very little of it in the future, so it’s strange to get to an age where it’s become clear, slowly and now undeniably, that there’s no going back there (pets gone, people dispersed, new busy life, less time for reflection, so that by the time I think about what I might be missing it seems very far away). I remember my sister doing the dishes and Superchunk playing on the radio, one summer, Meldrick sitting nearby I’m sure, and for a long time it was possible to recreate a version of that scene, return home and fall back into old patterns, make sure the music referred not to the past but to a permanently renewable mode of life. But now that it’s not possible, now that it doesn’t do that, now that it really does just refer to the past, it’s best to not let great old songs get shut away in a tomb.

So basically this mix is an attempt to imagine something beyond “A Quarter to Three,” a song with the time-suspending poignancy of The Go-Betweens’ “Spring Rain” and the further, to quote myself, exquisite pain of its placement at the end of its album (if The Hot Rock had been their last album, how might I live?), making the task of working past it all the more difficult. But I’m gonna try:

1. Sleater-Kinney – “A Quarter to Three”
2. Weekend – “Rosaries”
3. Digable Planets – “Black Ego”
4. Neneh Cherry – “Red Paint”
5. Swearin’ – “Mermaid”
6. Barbara Manning – “Smoking Her Wings”
7. The Pretty Things – “Death”
8. Black Hearted Brother – “UFO”
9. Raphael Saadiq – “Just Don’t”
10. Guided by Voices – “Islands (She Talks in Rainbows)”
11. Earl Sweatshirt – “Hoarse”
12. Bronski Beat – “Love and Money”
13. Danny Brown – “25 Bucks”
14. Iris DeMent – “Go On Ahead and Go Home”
15. Jimmie Dale Gilmore – “I’m Gonna Love You”
16. Grant Hart – “You Don’t Have to Tell Me Now”
17. Superchunk – “1000 Pounds”
18. Mercury Rev – “Empire State”

79.5 minutes

In every other case, my peak enthusiasm for these songs goes back to a time no earlier than last summer. A few of them come from albums of 2013 that I didn’t give their due (seriously, how I didn’t become more deeply involved in that Black Hearted Brother album is a mystery, it’s just great and pretty much guarantees that the next Slowdive album will be a fourth masterpiece), while others indulge a subdued, melancholic, early spring mood (Earl Sweatshirt’s “Hoarse,” with production that sounds like a David Lynch/Massive Attack collab, does both), until Iris DeMent (the female voice I need to hear after “25 Bucks”) and Jimmie Dale Gilmore make their late entrances and clear the way for the spectacular high of “Empire State.”

p.s. Formerly, mixtapes were a method of organizing my listening, one that’s never since been surpassed (not with writing, radio, etc.). Themes might emerge by accident but really I just wanted to collect everything new, focus my attention, tell myself that I could pick a favorite song by anyone. More recently, my deliberately quasi-thematic approach to mix-making, once or twice a year, with or without access to a fully functional tape deck, is less satisfying but also the only real option when I let so many songs pass me by, uncollected.

*“12 years old, skinny legs…” I don’t think I ever knew that line from “1000 Pounds,” but, God, can it get any closer?