@silver9mm From looking at your comments, it seems like it somehow left off the song by Spoon ("Chicago at Night"). Not sure why. Hmmmmm.

@silver9mm I still don't know why that song didn't play for you. Spoon is one of my favorite bands, partially because the album Girls Can Tell was part of a group of albums I got at one point in my life that really played a part in a shift in my musical tastes and also because Spoon will always be important to me because it was the second concert I saw with Kristin. It was intended to be the first. I wanted to go to the show. I wanted Kristin to spend time with me after first meeting her. I bought us both a ticket and hoped she would go with me. Luckily, she said yes. I acted like a total dork, but she somehow stayed with me.

@silver9mm Another band I initially didn't like. They put out an album before this that was considered "freak folk" and that folk side didn't appeal to me as much at the time. This album, however, changed my mind. I remember listening to it the first time with headphones on while in complete silence one night while Kristin was out with some friends. By the time it ended, I wanted nothing more than to listen to it over and over again.

@silver9mm Shellac is another one of my favorites. Sometimes, his lyrics try too hard to push his persona, but when they work they can be incredibly funny. It's the sound of the music that really resonates with me. I now realize how much early Gang of Four and Wire must have influenced this, but when I first heard the song "Prayer to God" years ago, I fell in love with this sound (although I hate that it's sometimes referred to as math rock).

@silver9mm Love the sound of this band and I love the lead singer's sense of humor. I missed a good opportunity to see a live show of theirs because i hadn't yet heard this album. I'm regretting that majorly.

@silver9mm I'm a huge fan of organ in songs. I don't know why, but I really, really am. There's something about MCD's lyrics that I love even though I have never been a sailor, I don't drink a lot of rum, and I'm not particularly prone to homicidal tendencies. Then again, I love The Velvet Underground and have never done heroin (and I don't think I'm trying to live vicariously either). Yeah, must be the organ.

@silver9mm of Montreal is another favorite band of mine. The album Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? sounds like what would happen if David Bowie met a girl, created an alter ego for her and for himself, saw that alter ego destroy both of them, and then decided to make it danceable. Since then, the lead singer has changed personas multiple times. "Coquet Coquette" brought things back to basics a little after a few albums of sexual imagery and Prince-style falsetto outbursts.

buys immediately

@silver9mm I'm still trying to get into this album. I've only listened to it one and a half times. The first time I ended up switching to Boxer because I was dying to hear a few particular songs. I love Matt's lyrics and vocals. Brent Knopf makes some odd choices at times, though, that I think pile too much on a song. I really loved how the most recent album from The National showed a lot of restraint. It meant that repeated listens really uncovered some great musical elements. I feel like sometimes with El Vy the music gets in the way a bit. Again, though, I'm coming around a bit more.

@silver9mm She is amazing! I talk about her music too much, and Kristin now refers to her as my girlfriend every time she is even mentioned by me in passing.

@silver9mm I love St. Vincent. I didn't start listening until the album Strange Mercy, so I appreciate some of the earlier songs and how the guitar approach is still complex but not as in your face as it might be on later songs.

@silver9mm I had a little Sufjan Stevens phase after his Illinois album came out, and this song was on the outtakes and extras album that came out later. I love some of the details that put me as a listener in a child's mindset (for example, using the pillows to make a property line) juxtaposed with the very adult context of the song. There's a song on the same disc that's called Pittfield that has some of the same vibes but is muuuuuch sadder to me. The line "I'm not afraid of you" develops a more emotional meeting as the song continues and it's just amazing. Why didn't I put that song on here? Was it too sad?

@silver9mm I suggest the songs "Hit Me" and "Husbands" also for some other tastes of Savages.

@silver9mm Post punk again. Don't know why I love it so much, but I do. This isn't my favorite song on the album, but it's the first one I ever heard from them and I know it was enough for me to want to hear more. They are really great live. The singer has an amazing presence.

@silver9mm Australian. Post punk. The chorus is super poppy and gets stuck in my head. The verses have that Joy Division feel I love. Kristin and I saw them "in the round" and in addition to being insanely close (where at times I worried I was going to get smacked with a guitar if either I or he decided to move too much) we both received a nice hug from the singer at the end of the show.

@silver9mm This is from a Liars album that a lot of people absolutely hated! I never understood it. Maybe it was because I always found a lot of humor in their lyrics about witches and persecution, whereas some others took it a little too seriously and found it to be really cheesy. Also, Kristin once used the bathroom at a small venue where we saw them and ran into the lead singer as he was on his way out of the ladies' room.

@silver9mm I love your description. I started listening to Beirut a while ago because of a friend of mine. After seeing The National live and realizing two members of Beirut are part of their live band, I started revisiting this album. While I like the songs "Santa Fe" and "East Harlem" more as individual tracks, there's something about the intro to this song that I love but can't quite explain why.

@silver9mm Me too! I really wanted to put a newer song from The Antlers on here (because the new album is fantastic), but I've been going back and listening to this album (Hospice) and enjoying it even more than I originally did. This song always stood out to me because of some of the lyrics ("When we get home we're bigger strangers than we've ever been before / You sit in front of snowy television, suitcase on the floor") and because the guitar sound as it moves into the chorus is right up my alley. It also always seemed like an oddity because it's hard to decipher how its lyrics connect to the rest of the album which all follows through with the concept of the relationship between a hospice worker and a patient with terminal bone cancer. It may not actually fit with the concept, but I appreciate the challenge of trying to figure out how it might.

@silver9mm Beach House is described as dream pop. At first, I totally hated that label (and subsequently the person who created it). I since have come around on it a little bit, particularly if the dreams tend toward sad ones. There are tinges of hope in a lot of their music, but there's this underlying sadness that i think comes through in Victoria Legrand's voice much of the time but also in the sparseness of the music. I was tempted toward one of the songs that has one of those grander moments (I think of Sigur Ros and their orchestral swells), but the lyrics in this one fit well for me with what I was thinking about for songs moving forward.

@silver9mm Protomartyr definitely appealed to me because of the Nick Cave vibe and because I gravitate toward a lot of bands that fit into the "post-punk" label. This song is part of a really powerful group of tracks near the end of the album. I love the transition into the final segment of the song which is why I picked it here. The song "Clandestine Time" is one I like more, but I didn't think it fit this early into a mix.

@silver9mm I didn't see what was so great about Against Me! when I first heard them, but I have since made sure I owned every single album. This is from their newest. I'm a sucker for the more honest, raw treatment of being trans, but I'm also just a sucker for how the tone of this particular song at the start of an album that dives into some pretty deep issues gets things started off in a way that strays from the "woe is me" approach.