Play me some Otis Redding

Happy birthday to Mr. Otis Redding, the patron saint of soulful southern gorgeousness in music (in my mind, he’s the one and only). Born September 9, 1941 in Dawson, Georgia, he would have been 65 today. Redding died in a plane crash just three days after recording “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay,” which would come to be likely his best-known contribution to the American musical lexicon.

Do you realize that his recording career only lasted seven years? Although he grew up singing, his first professional tracks were laid down in 1960 with the group Otis and The Shooters, and he died in 1967 at the age of 26; only seven years and such an impact in music.

In addition to being completely floored by the body of work that he left behind –so many of his songs just absolutely slay me in the best way possible– I’ve always felt a bit of a fond connection with Otis because our families both come from the same town of Macon, Georgia. My Grampy was born in Macon, the son of a Baptist minister, and Otis moved there at the age of 5 with his Baptist minister daddy as well.

Macon is a city of (currently) about 325,000 people (although it was less than half that in the ’40s) southeast of Atlanta. In 2002, Macon unveiled a commemorative statue to Otis in Gateway Park, recognizing his impact as one of their best-known native sons. When Otis was growing up he attended and sang in the choir at the Vineville Baptist Church.

I asked my Grampy about the Redding family and he replied via email (but picture him saying all this in his deep Southern drawl because this is how he actually speaks);

“That is all familiar geographic territory for me but I do not know the name, Otis Redding. My Dad’s sister, Ruth, was a member of the Vineville Baptist Church where this young man sang. I lived in Macon in 1946 when he first moved there and I attended the Vineville Church at times with my Aunt Ruth and her husband, Frank.

Love,
Grampy”

I smile when I picture the possibility of my Grampy sitting in a church pew next to a little Otis Redding, completely unaware (even to this day) who he was or his contributions to music.

Oh, play me some Otis Redding. The time is always right :

Tramp – Otis Redding
Before a friend of mine completely blew my mind with this song last year, I naively had no idea that Otis could rock it like this. One often remembers his slow songs, his soulful raspy wailing grooves, but the drumbeat alone in this is enough to make anyone get up and shake it. Add the brass and it’s just almost too much for one to bear. And I love the lyrics, the playful give and take between Otis and Carla Thomas, the female co-lead;

“Carla: You’re straight from the Georgia woods!
Otis: That’s gooooooood.”

But the best part of this song is beyond words; it’s at 0:52 when Carla launches into the allegations against Otis (he needs a haircut, he wears overalls) and Otis just lacks the words to respond to her allegations so he just trails off into a trademark “oooh….” – It must be heard to be understood, but it’s my favorite part of the song.

A Change Is Gonna Come – Otis Redding
Even though this is Sam Cooke’s song, and Sam caresses it with his silky pipes, I vastly prefer Otis’ version (recorded in the Spring of 1965). This version fairly drips with aching as Otis sings about the thick swelter of racial oppression in the South. You can almost feel and see the tension, like heat rising up off the August sidewalks.

You Left The Water Running – Otis Redding
From the intro: “-Two – one, two, ready, play” this song combines uptempo soulful grooves with lonely musings in the best tradition of all the “she done left me” tunes. I love the title lyric, the unfinished imagery of water left running and all the metaphors you can associate with that rushing, wasted splashing.

Satisfaction – Otis Redding
Monterey Pop Festival, 1967
This performance at the legendary watershed event of the Monterey Pop Festival was one of Redding’s last big shows, as he died in December of this same year. Some call this the performance of his career, captured on a record I own which pairs a (literally) incendiary set from Jimi Hendrix (recognize this picture from the event?) with Redding’s. I picked this up on vinyl from the famed stacks at Amoeba Music in San Francisco, it is one of the best records I own. Here’s a cool scan from the back:

Cigarettes & Coffee – Otis Redding
I wrote in an earlier post that “The Blower’s Daughter” by Damien Rice was the best 3am song ever written. Well, as Otis says in the lyrics here: “It’s early in the morning . . . about a quarter to three. I’m sittin’ here talkin’ with my baby, over cigarettes and coffee.” This is therefore the best 2:45am song ever written – it’s smoky and sleepless, all sorts of restlessness and beautiful insomnia tied up in these notes.

BONUS TRACKS:
Listening To Otis Redding At Home During Christmas – Okkervil River
A really lovely song from modern Austin, TX indie band Okkervil River, with various images that evoke home — one of which is Otis Redding: “Home is where beds are made, and butter is added to toast . . . I know that it’s home ‘cos that’s where the stereo sings.” Then it kicks into the chorus, which masterfully blends in the Redding refrain, “I’ve got dreams . . . dreams to remember” and made me smile wide the first time I listened to it one night in bed, in the dark.

Just Like A Woman – Bob Dylan
Just since we are on a Dylan kick around here lately (see last post), there is an interesting Otis-related story attached to this song. According to Mickey Jones (drummer of The Band), Dylan had played this freshly-written song once for Redding, who loved it and expressed the desire to record it himself as soon as possible. He died before he could do it, but every time I hear Dylan’s factual delivery in this song, I half picture Otis wailing it instead. Redding also recorded “Respect” first, before Aretha busted it out as her trademark tune.

(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay – Pearl Jam
3/26/94 in Murfreesboro, TN
And come on, you knew I’d work Pearl Jam into this somehow. This was the one and only time they’ve ever played this song live (complete with whistling) and did it with the help of co-author of the tune, Steve Cropper (of Booker T. & The MGs).

How good is all that? (that’s a rhetorical question). Pick yourself up some Otis Redding if you don’t have any, and head over to rbally to pick up the insanely good live set from 1966 at the famed Whisky-A-Go-Go.

Thanks Otis, you beautiful soul, you.

Bob Dylan: Stray Gems (or, soundtrack to an accident)

I started this post this morning, but between then and now I have been in my first car accident (no, not my fault; yes, I am okay, but my car — not so much). At the time I was listening to this playlist, so now I’ve got the sickening sound of crunching metal forever associated with “Ninety Miles An Hour” which was ironically playing at the time (but I was only going 45). Accident or no, that song’s still got some dang fine lyrics — and I am still excited about this post.

Ahem, as I was going to say: The most recent issue of Rolling Stone (with Bob Dylan, larger than life, on the cover) has a great playlist of “stray gems” — forgotten songs from Bob over the years. My friend Leo (who ROCKS) took the time to actually compile all of these tracks together into one zip file, and now I share them with you for your listening pleasure. Tracks are linked to the individual titles below (along with the commentary for each track), and a zip file is at the end if you, much like Depeche Mode, “just can’t get enough.”

STRAY GEMS
(RS 1008)
Some Dylan albums anyone would take to a desert island. Others have gotten lost in the tide. Here’s a guide to some high spots between the masterpieces
by Jonathan Lethem

Forget bootlegs. Forget, for the moment, bonus discs and DVD extras. What if the best Bob Dylan songs you’ve never heard were simply tucked away on below-the-radar discs with “nice price” stickers on them, unrescued by Biograph, Greatest Hits or The Bootleg Series, or by any movie soundtrack (recall how “The Man in Me” blindsided you in The Big Lebowski?).

Along with Down in the Groove‘s “Rank Strangers,” Under The Red Sky‘s “Cat’s In The Well,” and Knocked Out Loaded‘s “Brownsville Girl,” here are a few more gems concealed in plain sight:

In The Summertime
FROM Shot of Love
By now everyone knows that “Every Grain of Sand” is this album’s keeper – and as far as fine-hewn lyrics go, they’re right. But for sheer vocal heartache, this harmonica-drenched lament goes a great distance down another road entirely.

Copper Kettle
FROM Self Portrait
Dylan with strings, splitting the difference between Hank Williams and Bing Crosby, to make a kind of western-movie dream sequence in Technicolor.

Idiot Wind
FROM Hard Rain
A familiar song, yes, but in a ten-minute raging punk version like you’ve never known, with a band that teeters over several cliffs and survives.

Pressing On
FROM Saved
Ideally, you’d hear Dylan’s humblest and most sheerly gorgeous devotional song in one of its shimmering live versions. But the album take, complete with Dylan’s own piano work, will do.

Ninety Miles an Hour (Down a Dead End Street)
FROM Down in the Groove
Goofy backing vocals can’t mask the relish Dylan takes in tackling this doomy Hank Snow hit, which takes the widely used motif of the dead-end love affair and adds a vehicle.

Day of the Locusts and
Sign on the Window
FROM New Morning
From an album that revealed a Dylan both tender and hesitant, a slice-of-life recounting of his uneasy receipt of an honorary degree, and an ambivalent fantasia of pastoral life, both sung with questing beauty.

Delia
FROM World Gone Wrong
For those who know this early-Nineties solo covers record and its predecessor, Good As I Been to You, they’re not overlooked, just boon companions. Dylan’s murdered Delia is a different girl than Johnny Cash’s, but the poor things probably knew each other in school.

Under the Red Sky and
Handy Dandy
FROM Under The Red Sky
The first is a beguiling, gnomic pass at nursery rhymes, which Dylan mines as profitably as he does the Bible and the blues; the second, a perverse revision of “Like a Rolling Stone,” pointing to the sly japes of Love and Theft.

We Better Talk This Over
True Love Tends To Forget
Is Your Love In Vain? and
Baby, Stop Crying
FROM Street Legal (remastered)
(note: RS selected the whole album, but here are just four of the tracks)
Unlike the heralded Bootleg Series, this crucially cleaned-up version of possibly Dylan’s most undervalued collection of songs was dropped into the marketplace so quietly that few even noticed. Since the murk of the production was the biggest obstacle to hearing Dylan walking a tightrope between divorce and Jesus, why not give it a second chance – or a first? Just be certain you get the new version.

Spanish Harlem Incident
FROM Another Side of Bob Dylan
Heard it lately?

SNAG THESE DYLAN GEMS AS A ZIP
You can also stream all these tracks for a limited time on the Rolling Stone website (at the end of the article) if you aren’t in a downloadin’ mood.

The Martin Scorsese Dylan biopic No Direction Home is at the top of my Netflix queue, so maybe I’ll get that sometime this next week to continue in this Dylan trend (minus the car accidents).

Hopefully future bouts with Dylan in my life will not portend such dire consequences.

New Josh Ritter EP (demos & b-sides)

The Animal Years (2006, V2 Records) from Josh Ritter was a literate and eminently listenable folk-Americana gem full of sweeping lyrical panoramas and good, intelligent songwriting. Lucky for all of us, Ritter just released the Girl in The War EP (iTunes only) — a collection of b-sides and demo versions of songs from the making of that album.

The tracklisting of the EP is:
1) Girl in the War (album version)
2) Blame it On the Tetons (Modest Mouse cover)
3) Harbortown (b-side from the Animal Years sessions)
4) Peter Killed the Dragon (b-side from the Animal Years sessions)
5) Monster Ballads (early version from Animal Years sessions)
6) In the Dark (acoustic demo version)
7) Girl in the War (acoustic demo version)

Quite worth the $6.93, all the songs feel fresh and rambling in that way that Ritter has with a tune. The acoustic version of “In The Dark” is especially lovely, as well as this song:

“Harbortown” (b-side) – Josh Ritter


You Irish folks also get a similar goodie bag on the Ireland iTunes-only release of the Good Man EP. Since I can’t buy it here, any of you lads or lasses wanna share?

Oh, and Ritter kicks off a big ole U.S. tour towards the end of this month. I hear his live show is a thing to behold, so check him out if you get a chance.

Crikey!

(that just made me smile)

M. Ward: “I write songs out of a burning desire to create something good.”

I wanted to draw y’all’s attention to an excellent interview with M. Ward in the Chicago Tribune, reviewing his fantastic new Post-War album. If you recall, I posted a track (“To Go Home,” a Daniel Johnston cover with background vocals by Neko Case) from his new album a few weeks ago, and now his Post-War album is out — and it is mind-bogglingly good.

The Trib reviewer (Greg Kot) masterfully uses his words to capture the rich mood of the album: “Ward folds his skills into songs of unusual depth and the kind of humid lived-in atmosphere once routinely found on old Roy Orbison, Billie Holiday and doo-wop records. Ward’s albums live in the room in which they were created; the listener can almost feel the presence of the musicians through the speakers.” He is spot-on in expressing what I would want to say, and “humid” is a great word to describe the album. There is such a permeating sense of substance and immediacy to these tracks.

I’d say this album is definitely in the running for my top 10 list this year; it’s got the weight & beauty to sustain multiple listenings over the years.

I appreciate the depth of musical styles that Ward blends together, from the warm ragtime post-war sound of last-call tunes like “Afterword/Rag,” to the harmonies of the Beach Boys (notable on tracks like “Magic Trick,” co-written with My Morning Jacket’s Jim James) and the gentle folk storytelling of “Chinese Translation” (video here). Several of my friends are raving about it too (here or here), and the accolades are well-deserved.

Use some of your eMusic songs for this month to pick up this bad boy. Not an unworthy song in the bunch.

LISTEN: Post-War – M. Ward
(one of the most beautiful songs on the disc; honey rich, lovely, moody, sexy, fantastic. Begs to be listened to –really listened to– with your eyes closed)

It’s a good week to live in Chicago

All you cool cats who live in the Chicagoland area have some good FREE shows with native bands coming your way in the next few days (well, either free or “don’t be a cheap bastard/small donation for a good cause” shows):

THE REDWALLS
The Redwalls are headlining the Park West Carnivale, benefiting the Children’s Memorial Hospital. This event is an outdoor street festival featuring music, entertainment and food and celebrates world cultures. The event runs Saturday & Sunday, September 9 & 10, 2006.

The Redwalls headline the festival on Saturday 9/9 at 8pm.Ticket price is a $10.00 donation, the festival will be located on Halsted between Fullerton and Lill Streets in Chicago. This is an all-ages event. Come out and support.

THE M’S
Thursday, September 7 @ 1pm
Seattle’s KEXP.org is setting up shop from September 7th – 9th at Engine Studios in Chicago and they’ve invited The M’s in for an on-air performance. They are making the most of the opportunity by bringing the horn & string sections. That’s right, The M’s as an 11-piece.
Space is extremely limited, so go here: http://kexp.org/events/special.asp now and sign up.

Thursday, September 7, 7pm- 9pm
KEXP In Chicago – The Darkroom, KEXP Listener Party.
As if the studio appearance wasn’t enough, KEXP keeps the generosity coming with another free show and they once again ask The M’s to take part. They will.

Both shows are, obviously, recommended or else I wouldn’t be posting about them. Sheck it out!

Luce: “Eleanor Rigby” video (Beatles cover)

Last month I was fortunate to get to see San Francisco band Luce here in Colorado Springs, and was completely blown away by their entire show, but especially thrilled at this Beatles cover. As good of a show as I’ve seen in many moons, their set was melodic, catchy, tight, and fun.

There are three or four moments of loud/scratchy audio on this video (sorry!) but it is worth watching. The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” becomes unrecognizable as a loose, atmospheric, rocking jam — in the best possible way. Oh, and I’ll bet you SO didn’t know that Air Force cadets crowdsurfed:

(direct link in case the embedded video doesn’t work)

I shared a few beers with guys from Luce after their show and their whole story as an independent band is fascinating: their struggles, their joys, their pure passion for music. I am looking to do a longer feature/interview with them in October, so stay tuned. In the meantime, check out either their self-titled debut CD (winner of the “Outstanding Debut Album” at the 2003 California Music Awards) or 2005′s Never Ending, which has been getting constant rotation in my car this summer.

Also, if you are a Western U.S. (CA/NV) type, you have a few good opportunities to see them in the coming weeks:

Sept 22 & 23 – Great Basin Brewing Co., Reno, NV

Sept 30 – Little Fox Theatre, Redwood City, CA: This is a “Band Together” benefit/feel-good-vibes event for Luce, who has faced a string of crappy luck lately, with all their musical equipment stolen on the road & a fire that gutted frontman Tom Luce’s SF home. The event will feature some great Bay Area musicians as well as the Luce fellas.

Nov 2, 3 & 4 – The Sweetwater Saloon, Mill Valley, CA (again, a SWEET venue, great band, how can you go wrong?)

DOWNLOAD:
Interlude One (Open Your Heart) – Luce

Monday Music Roundup

I am sad about the news this morning that Steve Irwin (“Crocodile Hunter”) apparently died today in Australia while on a dive. Stingray strike to the heart. That sucks, although I can’t say I am surprised. Everytime we would watch Crocodile Hunter, I would shake my head at the insane stuff he would do, and comment that that was how he was going to die someday. I appreciated his childlike joy at the rad animals he would work with, but he’d always mess with the animals, and be like, “Crikey! She’s a beaut! Now I’m going to stick my finger in her butthole! Wow! She’s a feisty one!“

So, I guess in a way we can’t be surprised. But it sucks that he leaves behind a wife and a kid. Here’s to hoping he goes somewhere with lots of wild animals he can frolick with all day long, with no fear of bodily harm. Cheers, mate.

“I Ain’t Saying She’s Better Than You”
Donovan Woods
This is a slip of song, just a lovely acoustic guitar and eviscerating lyrics from Donovan Woods, a Canadian artist. As many times as I have listened to this song over the last few days, it makes me ache — and I have never even had someone say words like this to me: “Like all your men set in the past, it’s better to leave without being asked / So tell me again you’ll let me go, without saying things you already know / Like it’s over, and you don’t know her / But let me tell you honestly: I ain’t sayin’ she’s better than you, you see. She’s just better than you for me.” He tries to make it sound nice but that’s just guttingly harsh. But it’s a really lovely song, oddly enough.

His music is a bit hard to track down, but he has a MySpace and a label, and this is from his EP The Hold Up. Not that appearances matter, but he looks more like he’d come by to fix your plumbing, or drink PBR with you while you watch football, rather than spin these bittersweet melodies. (thx again Clea)

“These Streets”
(live from Bush Studios)
Paolo Nutini
I’d heard about this fella at the Boulder music conference — you know when you hear straight men talking enthusiastically about how good looking another guy is, he must really be something. I missed his live performance, which apparently was quite impressive, but did pick up a live EP which has pleasantly introduced me to his retro-tinged rootsy pop sound. Despite a name that is fully Italian, one listen to Paolo Nutini and it’s clear he is a Scottish chap, and he’s only 19 at that. “Feel good” is an overused descriptor, but it is impossible to listen to this without feeling happy, an excellent end-of-the-summer tune. His album These Streets is currently only available as an import in the U.S., but cites The Drifters, Ray Charles, and Van Morrison as influences.

This single is a charming little chronicle of when he first moved to London, roaming the busy roads: “These streets have too many names for me / I’m used to Glenfield Road and spending my time down in Ochy / I’ll get used to this eventually I know, I know / Life is good, and the girls are gorgeous / Suddenly the air smells much greener now . . . ” Having spent a little time in London myself, it makes me smile.

“Until We Fall”
(YouSendIt link, open in new window)
Audioslave
When this song kicks off, you wouldn’t think of it as Audioslave (with their Soundgarden/Rage Against The Machine past). With a bouncy Beatles-esque guitar intro, it sounds like a pop song until Chris Cornell’s trademark wail kicks in. I love his voice. Love, love, love. Overall there’s more of a bluesy-soulful vibe to Revelations, Audioslave’s third release (out tomorrow). This track is much better than the “Original Fire” tune that was leaked, which I think is actually one of the weakest cuts on the new album. This and other tracks take more of a funky/melodic approach and I like it.

“The Rain”
Kasey Chambers
This was a new name for me, even though Kasey Chambers is loved in her native Australia and has built quite a solid grassroots following in the U.S. through extensive touring in support of her last 3 albums. Her voice has a plaintive warm and slightly warbly quality to it that reminds me strongly of Kirsten Hersh (remember “Your Ghost” with Michael Stipe?), and she is also frequently likened to Lucinda Williams for her sharp & sly lyricism. This track is from her forthcoming Carnival album (September 12, Warner). Rootsy-bluegrass with a bit of twang, but not country.

“The Boys Are Back In Town”
(Thin Lizzy cover, Dublin 8/23/06)
Pearl Jam
It’s good to see Pearl Jam continuing to have fun with their covers now into the European leg of their tour. Here in the hometown of Thin Lizzy, they bust this one out to the absolute delight of the crowd. It’s a fun night with Mike nailing the bombastic riffs and Vedder clearly enjoying himself and mirroring the joy of the crowd. Makes me want to tease my hair a little bit, maybe even “be on the floor shaking what she got.”

One final note in the continuing quest for the perfect t-shirt (which is funny, because I don’t even really wear t-shirts): Knock Knock has expanded their mission to educate the public in popular slang.

Moving forward from their radically hilarious Slang Flash Cards, now you can wear the shirt and help your peeps learn when the proper time is to use words like freak, tight, player, fly, bomb, and grill. Big ups to them for this hilarious line, one of my favorites.

Are the Swedes really THAT much smarter than me?

I am no slouch when it comes to assembling IKEA furniture. Give me an allen wrench and let me have at it and ye shall have a fine entertainment center in no time.

HOWEVER.

There is something strange and unknowable about the IKEA Picture Hanging Kit. And yes, I am actually writing a post on it because it confounds me (and I don’t like to be confounded). I have about 4 or 5 IKEA Picture Hanging Kits in my home with all of the gold hooks and nails gone and used, because they are the only component of the assortment that I know what it does. Let me introduce you to some of the other parts, and if you are of Swedish descent and/or can tell me what they do, then I will send you some meatballs and lingonberry sauce:

Ah, my first nemesis. The plastic hook I can understand. The three prongs pointing out towards you I cannot. Do you impale your picture on the prongs or hang it on the hook? Unknown.

This thing looks like you could nail it (?) to your picture? And then it would grip a nail on the wall? That seems like a lot of work when I could just use a thumbtack. Who uses these?

I have sat and turned this guy over and over in my hands and tried to figure out which side is the front and what one would do with it. I see no nail hole. I am baffled.

And here’s the granddaddy of them all. It’s for when you want to hang eleven things on little hooks, AND impale things onto four prongs. What am I missing here?!

I have no doubt that someday the heavens of knowledge will open up on me, and in a celestial chorus of wisdom, I will suddenly understand all the pieces of the IKEA Picture Hanging Kit and my walls will look that much more professional and flawlessly hung. Maybe I’ll also get to use the X-Acto knife and twine that come in the kit as well.

This is not meant as a poor “dumb girl” post (not at all), but maybe I am just bitter because I nailed an IKEA nail INTO my finger today while trying to utilize these mysterious bits of hardware. Frickin’ IKEA (oh, and are they a purveyor of possibly phallic photography or not?).

I Don’t Think I’m Ever Going To Figure It Out (b-side) – Elliott Smith
Building A Mystery (live) – Sarah McLachlan

This Is Where I Belong: The Songs of Ray Davies and The Kinks

So if you find yourself out and about this weekend near a record store, and you are tempted to duck in and browse the bargain bin (as I am wont to do), here’s one of those great tribute CDs that you should definitely pick up:

This Is Where I Belong: Songs of Ray Davies and The Kinks (2002, Rykodisc) is an excellent little collection of covers by many artists that I enjoy. The variety of folks selected to contribute to this CD serve to illuminate the literate and consistently superb songwriting of Ray Davies, regardless of the musical lens you choose.

The great Pete Townshend is quoted as saying: “The Kinks were . . . quintessentially English. I always think that Ray Davies should one day be Poet Laureate. He invented a new kind of poetry and a new kind of language for Pop writing that influenced me from the very, very, very beginning.”

It’s a treat to read the liner notes, as they are written by Davies himself; join him as he talks about his recollections of each song, when it was written, who it was written for. He also muses on the artists covering the songs with interesting results (“I haven’t eaten a lambchop since 1975 but I really miss the mint sauce.”)

TRACKLIST
1. “Better Things” – Fountains Of Wayne
(Davies writes, “Who is Wayne, I wonder?”)
2. “Starstruck” – Steve Forbert
3. “Stop Your Sobbing” – Jonathan Richman
(a ha! In a recent interchange I had about Jonathan Richman, I knew I had seen his name somewhere very recently. This is spirited rendition from Jonathan; Davies shares, “I nearly produced The Modern Lovers years ago, but unfortunately our schedule did not allow it. I hope Jonathan Richman has forgiven me.”)
4. “No Return” – Bebel Gilberto
(an interesting flamenco-tinged interpretation; Davies writes, “‘No Return’ with Bebel Gilberto is quite ironic because I certainly wrote the song with her mother in mind to sing it.”)
5. “A Well Respected Man” – Josh Rouse
6. “Victoria” – Cracker
7. “Who’ll Be The Next In Line” – Queens Of The Stone Age
8. “Big Sky” – Matthew Sweet
9. “Art Lover” – Lambchop
10. “Picture Book” – Bill Lloyd & Tommy Womack
11. “Muswell Hillbilly” – Tom O’Brien
12. “Get Back In Line” – The Minus 5
13. “‘Til The End Of The Day” – Fastball
14. “This Is Where I Belong” – Ron Sexsmith
(Davies writes: “I did get a sneak preview of [this track] and hearing it helped me rediscover it for myself.”)
15. “Fancy” – Yo La Tengo
16. “Waterloo Sunset” – Ray Davies & Damon Albarn (of Blur)

The Yo La Tengo track is a completely new invention, the Josh Rouse tune has that sly smoothness to it that I love about him, and the Lambchop (needs no mint sauce) version of “Art Lover” is fuzzy and melodic and extremely enjoyable. Matthew Sweet turns in an expansive cover of “Big Sky,” and Cracker rocks on “Victoria,” a la their best Kerosene Hat-era material. Overall this is a solid, quality album (and highlights really the best of the tribute album genre — how adventurous and diverse it can be).

As Davies also says in the notes: “Some of you may be discovering these tracks for the first time. In a way, as I listen to it I will be re-discovering part of myself.”