Okay, it’s almost the weekend, so music. I was thrilled to learn this week [maybe I just hadn’t been paying attention] that Ani DiFranco is coming out with her first new record in about three years. If you have ever been an Ani DiFranco fan, you understand that she used to put out a couple records a year at times, so while I’m quite sure she very much deserved the break between 2008’s Red Letter Year and this new record ¿Which Side Are You On?, it was a bit strange going that long without new music from her. It’ll be released in January and there’s more info about the record here. For now, let’s listen to the title track, which I’ve seen her perform live before. It’s a reconfiguring of Pete Seeger’s labor protest song “¿Which Side Are You On?” which keeps the chorus intact, but updates the verses for our times. We need more protest songs and protest singers, really. I worry whether they’d even get noticed in our consumer-driven culture, though. Anyway, let’s listen to that, then hit shuffle on the old iTunes, see where we end up ten songs later, yadda yadda, etc.
Now for the shuffle and ooh, it’s a bonus Random Twelve! Why? Because the second Brandi Carlile song is a hidden track that comes after the first one on the CD. That makes eleven. Then, the second Pete Yorn song is a hidden track that comes after “Simonize.” Two hidden tracks! So, Random Twelve!
1. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – “Black Water”
2. Jolie Holland – “Your Big Hands”
3. Glenn Gould – J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variatio 3 a 1 Clav. Canone All’Unisono
4. Solo Andata – “A Ballet Of Hands”
5. Brandi Carlile – “Hallelujah” [Leonard Cohen cover]
6. Brandi Carlile – “Forever Young” [Alphaville cover]
7. Duke Ellington – “Rhapsody In Blue” [Gershwin]
8. Counting Crows – “Up All Night (Frankie Miller Goes To Hollywood)”
9. Animal Collective – “My Girls”
10. Sigur Rós – “Untitled 4 (Njósnavélin)”
11. Pete Yorn – “Simonize”
12. Pete Yorn – “A Girl Like You”
I’m posting a ton from this mix, because it is that awesome. Really, now that I think of it, I’m giving Counting Crows the shaft, because gahhhh, but everything else gets posted. Click on the Counting Crows song if you really want to hear it, okay? I am not kidding when I say that this mix is worth listening to in full. The songs with lyrics really work together if you listen to them in the order that I’m posting them, and then there are all these lovely instrumental pieces!
[“Forever Young” is in that video as well!]
And here are the instrumental pieces, as well as the one written in “Hopelandic.”
