Home Is Wherever I'm With You

Just when I think I must be totally intolerable and an absolute beast, Christian does something sweet like make me a mix cd. Mix cds remind me of when we met and our first ten years together and what it felt like when we tried to impress each other with the perfect mix tape and fell in love with new songs together and spent hours listening to the perfect rock songs just because they sounded so good. Those were beautiful, simple times and a good mix reminds me of what it was like then, just like the way night blooming jasmine reminds me of my childhood on Audubon Street and now of my father.

October 2010/Home Is Where I'm With You:

1. Home - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
2. I Saw You Blink - Stornoway
3. Giving Up the Gun - Vampire Weekend
4. Crash Years - The New Pornographers
5. Say No to Love - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
6. Fixed - Stars
7. Bloodbuzz Ohio - The National
8. Daughter - Loundon Wainright, III
9. Don't Think Twice It's All Right - Bob Dylan
10. Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show
11. Little Lion Man - Mumford & Sons
12. The Sun Also Sets - Ryan Adams
13. The Good That Won't Come Out - Rilo Kiley
14. Undertow - Warpaint
15. The Butterfly Collector - The Jam
16. 10 Mile Stero - Beach House
17. All the Umbrellas in London - The Magnetic Fields
18. Straight In at 37 - The Beautiful South
19. Where I'm Going - Cut Copy

My favorite track on the mix is, by far, Home. You have heard this song; I am sure of it. The song is all over the place - in commercials, in stores, in videos. It is simple and sweet and full of love and old-fashioned and catchy and just all around perfect. The other highlights for me are Stornoway (another lovely, catchy tune and there is a Lucy in that song), the Beach House track (wow, so so pretty), and the Vampire Weekend track, because I love VW. Then there are some old treasures that I can't believe I missed, like the Loudon Wainright song, Daughter, which is awesome.

Decoding the little secrets of the mix is the best part of all. I wonder about underlying themes, accidents, and coincidences. The parts that are obvious make me smile, like the Beautiful South song (part history, part age, part inside joke). Then there are others like Fixed by The Stars. We are going to see The Stars next month when they play here in NOLA, so that track makes sense. But I wonder, for example, about Little Lion Man..it has this incredible refrain that makes me want to run forever - is that why it is on here, 1/2 marathon motivation? And what about The Jam's, The Butterfly Collector, the song is so creepy - even with The Jam singing it! How can anything that The Jam sings sound creepy? Is it a nod to Halloween? Christian does have a decent sense of humor.

The best part about a good mix cd is how Christian wants to know whether I am enjoying the songs and if I think a track is as infectious as he thinks it is, and (probably) whether the mix makes me fall in love with him all over again, which it always does.