This seems like an odd place to start my term as music editor for SilentTalkie because this is kind of an addendum to a previous article that I wrote for another site but it’ll give you a good idea of my tastes in music and what you can expect in this space over the coming weeks until I get sacked for someone more talented that doesn’t start his articles with extremely long, run on sentences.
During my relatively short existence, I have spent a great deal of time on the road, with most of it being in the American Midwest and Canadian Prairies. For those of you who have yet to visit these sparsely populated areas, let me set the scene for you. You’ve been driving in a car for about 8 hours, you see the forests break and before you lies a barren horizon, filled only with glowing fields of golden wheat. As you enter the late afternoon, you start to tire a little as you can see the sun start to descend while you race to beat it west.
This is kind of a unique part of the road trip experience and the music you select can go a long ways to keeping you, the driver, awake and alert for the last 10 hours of the road trip. If the music is too soft, you’ll be lulled to sleep, while something too fast will pick you up pretty quickly but will also drop you like the ending of a sugar rush. The trick is to find something that fits in the middle. Below are my recommendations:
The Weakerthans – Reconstruction Site: This CD typifies what I’m looking for. It’s a little more upbeat than their earlier releases but doesn’t speed too quickly ahead. Just imagine yourself popping it into your CD player, setting the cruise control, leaning back and watching the terrain fly by.
The Watchmen – Slomotion Disc 1: Long before The Postal Service wow’d us as a rock band gone electronic, The Watchmen released this disc. After their drummer quit, the band released one more album, putting a drum machine in place of their old friend. The result is something perfect for the road trip. The mid-tempo beats keeps your eyes open while Danny Graves’ voice propels you along the highway.
Cake – Comfort Eagle: Actually, this could be any album by Cake. They just write what you need. Grooving bass lines with catchy melodies and easy songs to sing-a-long to.
K-Os – Joyful Rebellion: Often what you need is just an album without a bad song on it. While these are usually tough to find, K-Os made a delightful disc, even though most of the singles have been killed by over play on the radio.
Lassie Foundation – Face Your Fun: A somewhat different album from these California dream-pop veterans. The album features a contemporized 80′s pop sound mixed with some of the indie rock sounds of the last couple years and the resulting mix is something that feels fresh, as opposed the tired nature that you might imagine mixing these two over used genres.
Weezer: Geek rock at its poppiest. While not quite the introspection of Pinkerton, the “Blue” album gives you ten tracks that always brings me back to a simpler time, aka high school.
Buck 65 – Talkin’ Honky Blues: While the grizzled stories spun by this Montreal rapper are more suited to Texas than the MidWest, it still fits the mood, especially as you get West of Minnesota and Iowa.
The Canadian content is a little above CANCON regulations but all these discs will fill the need. If you disagree with my picks or have suggestions of your own, submit them.
