Artist-Curated Playlists

Listen, The xx are people, too. Yeah, they seem overly morose and make austere, sad tunes that got you through some rough times in college, but they have their own needs and desires. And it’s not easy to be on tour—and thats why their mix, “The xx: on the road,” is such a revelatory look into what the trio listens to throughout the good times and the bad, after the excellent shows and after the depressing gigs that bum everyone out. (If you’ve been in a band, you understand this despair.) Creating the perfect sonic zone is the key to surviving the drives between shows with your sanity intact, and this mix definitely conjures some vivid vibes.“The xx: on the road” opens with a song of their own: “I Dare You," a track that signifies confidence and, as a precursor to their favorite jams, serves as a testament to the band’s search for meaning in the musical world. It is pretty cool to see Iggy Pop’s (Bowie-produced) “Nightclubbing” and Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting” on here, and it’s easy to hear how the slow-motion darkness of those songs has affected The xx over the course of their career. But while its not surprising to learn they enjoy grooving to Talking Heads and Dinosaur, it requires a little more imagination to visualize them getting jiggy to Missy Elliott and Usher.Overall, all of these tracks elicit a pretty relaxed vibe; there’s no noise music, no metal, no jazz, no classical, nothing too avant-garde. This isn’t music for pregaming a monumental event or for shotgunning beers. This is some serious, chill-the-fuck-out music. And it totally makes sense coming from The xx.

I first listened to Yo La Tengo sometime in the mid-90s, slightly after the release of their 95 album Electr-O-Pura. I was living in rural North Carolina, and the idea of "indie" music was pretty new to me, and it was pretty amazing to me that there were bands creating great experimental pop music in a commercial vacuum. It seemed more "authentic" and "honest." You can laugh at those values now, but for a young person living in a small town at the south in the pre-internet era, these things didnt seem illusionary then. I was primarily drawn to the dueling aesthetics of ambience and noise in their music, especially evident on Painless and in songs like "The Evil that Men Do." I saw them in Charlotte,NC and they played 20 minute stretches of noise. Sometime after I Heard the Heart Beating as One, my musical interests had shifted, I largely abandoned guitar-based music for electronic and hip-hop. I was surprised many years later, living in San Francisco and in my mid-20s, that they had become a much quieter band, and were darlings of the latte-n-vinyl, NPR set. I wasnt sure who had changed more -- them or me -- but this is still a great playlist of the songs that theyve covered over the years. Its also great to see bands getting more involved with curation.

founder Phil Pirrone wants you to have a good time. And dammit if he isnt trying with the 2018 installment of his six-years-running fest. See, unlike some other festivals that have all but fully homogenized in recent years, Southern Californias Psych rock celebration is still uniquely its own beast, and not just because of the pinpointed approach (music thats centered on psych while exploring every corner it has to offer), but also because of the immersive experience waiting for those who take the trek out beyond LA county. While its expanding from the desert to a lake at the edge of the San Jacinto Mountains this year, headliners like Tame Impala and Warpaint ease into night 1, while full psych worship with King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Ty Segall and White Fence electrifies night 2, before the weekend closes out with shoegaze icons My Bloody Valentine on night 3. And the day line-ups are equally as impressive for anyone into this musical movement born of the Mojave desert, with highlights like Kikagaku Moyo, Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, Wand, Earthless, Deap Valley, and now that were listing them, honestly too many to list. But as for that experience we mentioned? In between sets and before and after the shows, theres no shortage of art installations, sound baths, yoga, desert and moon teachings, films, workshops, talks and anything else you might wanna trip into.Founder Phil Pirrone has been doing this since 2012 and also operates his own psych band JJUUJJUU, so when we asked him what make for the best soundtrack to take the journey out to this year, heres what he came up with.Says Pirrone: "This playlist is for you, just like . This playlist is for having a good time, just like . This playlist will brush your teeth, just like .”Listen above or go right here. takes place October 12 - 14th in Lake Perris. Gates open noon daily with late night entertainment after the headliners. For tickets and more info, go to desertdaze.org.

Spaces are important. And for many people, the bathtub is the most sacred of all listening spaces. Amniotic water temperature, flickering candles, blissful solitude — rockin’ tunes in the tub rules. Thus, it makes sense why receiving someone’s bathtub playlist can be a truly revealing, psychological experience. Here are a few thoughts on Chance the Rapper’s bathtime playlist, titled “Yup.” First, if it were me, I would begin with something a little more relaxing, but that’s just my personality—”Harambe” is a cool choice to start off with, and Young Thug had a great 2016, so he deserves the top spot here. Then we go onto Bon Iver’s “00000 Million,” the inclusion of which 1) seems appropriate for bathing, and 2) reminds me of Rosie O’Donnell’s tweet from 2011, “i like the song perth — its good music for making dinner.” There are a lot of good hip-hop tracks on here, many of which I missed earlier in the year. I love that Chance included “Summer Friends” from <i>Coloring Book</i>—listening to one’s own music is an important experience, and the bath is a great place for reflection. Lots of Frank Ocean on here (maybe too much?), and a few things on that I’ve never heard of. Didn’t know Smokie Norful—now I do, and I like him. Even though this is a personal playlist, I feel like it should still be subject to the Playlist/Mixtape Rulebook, which clearly states that an artist not be used more than once on the same mix, and if they are, definitely not twice in a row. Penalty!

My own personal peep into the strange and beautiful heart of Arkansas music.  Whether it’s the butter-knife slide of CeDell Davis, Pharaoh Sanders’ sheets of sound, Jim Dickinson’s irreverent approach to recording or the prepared-piano-player compositions of Conlon Nancarrow, Arkansas has always produced sounds that ignore the rules.  I left off a few of the unusual suspects in favor of curve balls like The Insect Trust whose founding member Robert Palmer not only was the first full-time rock writer for the New York Times but also grew up next door to Pharoah Sanders. I also wanted to highlight a few of the early architects of rock-n-roll like Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Louis Jordan as well as a few familiar names like Glen Campbell and Al Green.  Some entries might need a little explaining. For instance, I had somehow missed the fact that Little Rock native, Al Bell, the founder of Stax Records, was also the songwriter behind songs like Eddie Floyd’s Raise Your Hand as well as the Staple Singers smash I’ll Take You There.  One of the gifts of growing up in a state that often flies under the cultural radar is that you can let your freak flag fly and with that in mind I close out the list with incomparable Elton and Betty White.‍

Photo Credit: Bobby Fisher

The Bobby Lees’ lo-fi, high-powered punk evokes classic DIY noise while sounding urgent and vital. For their 2020 sophomore album, SKIN SUIT, the Woodstock, NY, band recruited underground punk hero Jon Spencer for production, cover Richard Hell and The Voidoids (“Blank Generation”) and Bo Diddley (“I’m a Man”), and churn out fresh, feverish riffs in a manic call to their own generation. Songs like “Move” and “Drive” are so jittery and jumpy, they almost feel claustrophobic, while vocalist/guitarist Sam Quartin’s shivers and sneers add a bluesy, breathless bombast that offers a sweet sense of catharsis. It’s just the type of energy to make you feel alive—a theme the band also embraces on this specially curated mix.

The Bobby Lees say of their playlist: “Our new record SKIN SUIT just came out on 7/17/20 on Alive Naturalsound Records. We were scheduled to be on tour most of the year, but everything got canceled, so right now we need a little extra boost to get the day going and feel all right. These songs do the trick!”

In the mid-2010s, high school friends Stefan Blair and Liam Parsons began tinkering with a 4-track tape machine, crafting hazy, lazy lo-fi melodies under the name Good Morning. The Melbourne duo have since come into their own, releasing three full-length albums in a span of under 18 months. Their most recent release, Basketball Breakups, was recorded in just four days while the band were on tour in Japan in 2018. That rapid recording process gives the songs a sort of looseness that evokes the detached coolness of The Velvet Underground and the melodic whimsy of The Kinks. As the duo prepare for their North American tour in support of the album, Liam shares with us the songs he relies on to help calm his nerves.

Says Liam of the playlist: “Music that I have been playing for the week commencing September 30 as I’ve been moving out of my house and packing up my stuff to go on tour. Some of it makes me dance alone in my kitchen (Pet Shop Boys) and some makes me cry a little (Weyes Blood), but it’s all part of the same process.”

Grey Mcmurray creates a haunting baroque mix that bounds up and down a whole spectrum of emotions without ever letting up. On his hypnotizing debut solo album, Stay Up, he fuses classical and ambient music with the poignancy of a singer/songwriter unleashing his most vulnerable secrets. It’s music that’s beautiful and terrifying at once, and cinematic in the way it constantly builds tension. To give us some perspective on his wide and fascinating range of sounds and influences, Mcmurray put together this Oslo playlist just for us. Says Grey of the playlist: “All of this music feels inevitable. Like eggs or pancakes or coffee finding their way to the start of the day. Different slots, but all of them tumbling unconsciously toward their resting place in eternity. I don’t mean to imply any label for any position. Just that, taken together, words like high or low or pop or serious or old or new evaporate, as if they were never really there. (I don’t think they were ever really there.) Also, when down these help me.”

Former Dead Astronauts singer and producer Hayley Stewart continues to explore whole new worlds as Mecha Maiko. Her latest album, Let’s!, slips frequently between dark, brooding synthwave and bright, danceable disco-infused pop on tracks like “Alive” and “End of Your Life.” This melding of opposites embodies everything about Mecha Maiko, down to the name itself, which was inspired by Stewart’s fascination with Japanese culture: Mechas are giant robots controlled by humans, while a maiko refers to a geisha in training. A similar theme runs through this handcrafted playlist she put together for us—a synth-laden soundtrack that blends mechanical rhythms with sensual melodies to get you dancing like it’s the end of the world.

Says Stewart of the playlist: “Dance tracks for people who want to tell the apocalypse to fuck off. These unapologetically catchy Italo/dance/electro songs will help us ganbatte [translation from Japanese: ‘do your best’] while we change the world.”

DJ and producer Adrian Sherwood has long been at the forefront of the British dub scene as the founder of the influential On-U Sound label. One of his most treasured relationships over the years has been with Jamaican icon Lee “Scratch” Perry. Here, Sherwood explains their first momentous meeting:“Our mutual friend, the radio DJ Steve Barker, first introduced me to Lee in the mid-1980s. He said, ‘Look, you guys have got to get together.’ Steve was in Lancashire, but we agreed to meet at Southern Studios. Lee turned up with Rudy, who is married to Max Romeo’s sister. Rudy was driving him around, and he turned up with some multitracks and said, ‘Put these on.’ So I put them on, and they were him doing cover versions of Bob Marley songs. I think he had a real beef with Bob Marley at that point. I said, ‘Hang on a minute, check some of these rhythms.’“Style had recorded some rhythms in Jamaica that I’d been overdubbing and processing in London. I also had some other rhythms that I’d recorded with Style and the crew in London. So I played them to Lee. Lee loved them and said, ‘Get the mike,’ and that was the start of the Time Boom X De Devil Dead album, which we spent a year making. We’ve gone on to work together a lot since, and I’m particularly proud of Rainford, which I think is the most intimate album that Lee has ever made and one of my best productions.”

Sherwood worked with Perry on Rainford and another album released in 2019, Heavy Rain. To celebrate both releases and the duo’s long-standing partnership, the English producer put together a playlist spanning the 35 years they’ve worked together, in which they’ve defined—and continually redefined—the sound and feel of dub music.

Photo Credit: Kishi Yamamoto