Saturday, March 15, 2008

heart on a stick, dipped in a vat of burnt sugar

or, a playlist : songs for the lovestruck and the forlorn

Here's a mix CD of a playlist I've kept from one iPod to the next. I don't really have a name for it other than the generic Acoustic Ballads, but I've learned to live with it. Any other adjective would be inaccurate; any other noun contrived. Songs have come and gone in this list, but they all have one thing in common: they're mostly stripped down songs about love, loss and yearning, and they're unabashedly sentimental. It doesn't necessarily mean they're gooey and clichéd. Most of these are not off-the-shelf expressions of abstract feelings, but experiences written as stories, as intentions, as streams of consciousness. These guy don't think you wasted their love; they watched you deal in a dying day and throw a living past away. You haven't got them so confused; they're turning over TV stations, situations running through their heads. In other words, they're the anti-Celine.

As usual, you can listen to the songs two ways: click on the image below to hear them all in one go, or on the song titles to hear them individually.



  1. Somebody That I Used To Know : Elliott Smith
  2. No Fear Of Falling : I Am Kloot
  3. Saturday : Josh Rouse
  4. Naked As We Came : Iron & Wine
  5. To Be Alone With You : Sufjan Stevens
  6. I Wouldn't Miss It For The World : Johnathan Rice
  7. Poetry & Aeroplanes : Teitur
  8. Sleeping To Dream : Jason Mraz
  9. Only You : Joshua Radin
  10. Your Sweet Voice : The Reindeer Section
  11. Trouble : Ray LaMontagne
  12. My Winding Wheel : Ryan Adams
  13. Kathleen : Josh Ritter
  14. Dogs : Damien Rice
  15. Silent Sigh : Badly Drawn Boy
  16. Babylon : David Gray
  17. On Your Side : Pete Yorn

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